


unlikely lighthouses

by asymmetric



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Dreams, Gay Panic, M/M, Magical Realism, Parallel Universes, Rock Out With Your Socks Out Tour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 11:36:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5003266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asymmetric/pseuds/asymmetric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing that's messing with him is that it hadn't felt like a dream. The details haven't spun together as the day goes on, and the colours and voices and sensations hadn't been off in any way. His room had looked exactly like he remembered it looking when he was a kid, and Calum had been even wearing the right pair of soccer shorts—the ones with the number “1” peeled off on one leg so that his right said “19” and the other just said “9”. It hadn't felt like a dream; it had felt like a memory. </p><p>Michael may feel fucked up sometimes, but he knows that's impossible. Obviously it's impossible. He could never have forgotten something like that. He never propositioned Calum when they were fourteen.</p><p>(in the middle of the North American leg of the ROWYSO tour, Calum builds a friendship bracelet and Michael starts to have dreams of another version of them)</p>
            </blockquote>





	unlikely lighthouses

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY
> 
> so this was supposed to be done ages ago and was supposed to not cause me this much grief, but it is here now. it is DONE! this fic was inspired by malum being ridiculously real this past tour and...always
> 
> endless thanks to [ellen](http://satellitesandfallingstars.tumblr.com), who looked over this for me and let me scream on gdocs chat even though i wouldn't answer any of her questions
> 
> there iiiisss a fanmix [HERE](http://8tracks.com/asymmetricboys/unlikely-lighthouses-fanmix-1) which you can listen to if you want
> 
> enjoy boys being really really dumb

Midnight is long gone and the bus is gliding through the darkness like a boat, lost somewhere in the wide open sea of America. Michael has been awake for a couple hours now, launched out of sleep into the swaying hum of the bus by a nightmare he can't quite remember, something about fire and hands on his face. He gave up on the idea of getting back to sleep the last time the yellow lights of a town swept past the windows—ten, twenty minutes ago—and now he's just lying on the bench in the back lounge, bare feet propped up against the window. His skin sticks to the glass, clinging cool and damp like plastic wrap, and it's a welcome distraction from the persistent coin of heat at his left temple. 

The burns are bothering him again. 

He reaches up and places his thumb carefully against one of them, the one nearest to his eye. It feels like smooth, tight leather under his hand, and the heat of it flares up again at the contact. The back of his throat feels like chalk and he swallows hard, thinking of the bandages he'd had to wear on his head and the strange humiliation of facing his own reflection when they had come off. The burns are barely visible now, and don't even hurt—the hotness of his skin there is just a phantom feeling, a ghost injury. There's no way it could actually still be hurting. It had happened back in London, in a whole other country, weeks ago. Michael isn't sure how many weeks, exactly; on tour, time becomes liquid, and it's only the consistency of it that changes, some days moving molasses slow, others glugging out fast like water being poured on concrete. He's floating no matter what, and never quite sure where he is. 

He moves his arm slightly, planning to cross it over his chest because it's gone a bit numb from hanging off the bench onto the floor, and somehow the movement makes his shoulder lock up, a twinge of pain shooting through his body. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, and his feet are skidding down the window with a cartoonish squeal and slamming loudly—painfully—into the windowsill. “Fuck!” 

Instinctive tears well up in the corners of his eyes. It's a reflex more than anything, but it makes him feel worse, more pathetic, the idea that he's crying over this. I'm a mess, he thinks, wallowing a little. 

“Michael?” 

The door to the lounge slides open slowly, and a dark silhouette appears. Michael can't see his face, but he doesn't need to; Calum's voice is one of three he could identify even from ten miles away. He's not surprised somehow that it's Calum—Calum's been paying Michael a little bit more attention than usual since Michael took a burst of fire to the face, watching him sometimes like he thinks Michael's going to disappear. 

“Did I wake you?” Michael mumbles. “Sorry.” 

“'S alright,” Calum says. He's just a slap of ink against the door, his voice scraping lower than it ever goes when he's fully awake. Michael closes his eyes and hears the shuffle of Calum moving towards him, feels the ballooning of the cushion under his cheek when Calum sits down a foot away. 

“You okay?” Calum asks. 

“Can't sleep,” Michael answers. “You should though. Go back to bed.” 

Calum shifts like he's going to do as Michael says, like that's enough for him, and Michael has to fight down a sudden urge to grab him and force him to stay. He doesn't move, but he gets his wish anyways; Calum settles back down, poking at Michael's hand where he's still rubbing his temple absentmindedly. 

“You're messing with it again,” Calum says. It's a statement of fact, not an accusation like Ashton would've made, but Michael feels chastised anyway. He pulls his hand away, Calum's fingers slipping off. 

“I can do what I want,” Michael mutters. 

“Is it hurting?” Calum says. 

“Yes,” Michael says. “It's like my skin is bubbling right off of my face.” 

Calum snorts and scrubs the pad of his thumb right over one of Michael's burns; Calum runs hotter than Michael does, and the touch brings heat flooding to Michael's head, to his cheeks, his neck. He feels flushed all over, and he bats Calum's hand away, irritated. 

“Yeah, right,” Calum says. “You can't even see them.” 

“What does that have to do with how it feels?” Michael grouses. He wants to be grumpy, and Calum has this unfortunate tendency to try and cheer people up unless he's in a mood himself. 

“Are you okay?” Calum asks. 

“You already asked me that.” 

“I meant specifically that time. Now I just mean generally.” 

Michael opens his eyes and peers up at the cliff underside of Calum's jaw. “Like, cosmically, am I okay?” 

Calum shrugs. “You were being weird earlier today too.” 

Earlier today they did an acoustic performance at a radio station, and there had been a sound tech after who had been flirting with Michael. Michael had sort of flirted back, just for fun, because the tech was a guy—25 and short, with a strip of purple down the centre of his hair and a sick neck tattoo of a dragon—and obviously the guy part meant that Michael wasn't actually interested. Only, the tech had made a leading comment about how he could “show you some more of the...equipment”, and Michael had had the strange thought that if he wanted, this was something he could do. He could pull this guy and see what the gay fuss was about. The guy was older and cool and it would be a funny thing to tell his band later, one of those gross, weird things you did just to have bragging rights, something like, “I chugged the glass of sour milk in the fridge”; “I ate bull's testicles from that weird sketch restaurant”; “I made out with a dude in a closet!”

He hadn't, of course, done anything. He'd made stupid, fumbling excuses, instead of just saying the truth (“sorry, I'm straight”), and the guy had given him this odd, pitying look, like he knew something Michael didn't. 

“Shame,” he'd said, patting at the side of Michael's face. “You're kinda sweet.”

His fingers had stroked over the burns beside Michael's eye, and they had made something there flare up. Michael couldn't stop feeling it hours later, feeling it now, and it was annoying. He'd been burned ages ago—the effect of pyrotechnics shouldn't last this long. 

“I've got a headache,” Michael says to Calum now. It's not untrue. 

Calum makes a little humming noise, and they coexist in silence for a minute. Calum's staring off out the window, and Michael takes the opportunity to look at him, cataloguing all the ways he looks different from this angle. For a second he wonders if he's ever seen Calum from this particular position before, but he dismisses the thought quickly. He's known Calum for over ten years now; there's no way that he hasn't looked at Calum. 

“I wish our bunk beds were a bit bigger,” Calum says suddenly. 

“Why?” Michael asks. 

“'Cause at home we could just share a bed and I could force you to sleep,” Calum says. “But I think one of us would probably die if we tried to stuff into the bunk bed together.” 

“That's quitter talk,” Michael says. “But I told you I was fine. Go to sleep.” 

“Don't tell me what to do,” Calum says softly. His left hand is lying on the seat in the space between them, and the backs of his fingers are just brushing up against Michael's head. Michael squirms a little closer, trapping one finger defiantly under his skull, punishment for Calum not listening to him. Calum doesn't even seem to notice. 

“You're not homesick, are you?” Calum asks. 

“No,” Michael says. “Why would I be homesick? I've got you guys.” 

Calum grins, teeth cutting a sudden white slice into the darkness. 

“Damn straight,” he says. 

It takes Michael two more tries to get Calum to go back to bed, but at least by the time Calum agrees, Michael is okay with him leaving. Calum drags his hand down the side of Michael's face as he stands up, his hand big enough that he can press his thumb to the centre of Michael's chin while the tips of his fingers are still laid hot over the burns. He hovers there for a second above Michael, cradling Michael's face in a weirdly firm grip, and then he's letting go and moving to the door. The door slides shut behind him, and Michael rolls over on the bench until he can press his burned temple to the cushion underneath, needing the pressure he'd lost when Calum left. The bus moves them weightlessly on. 

He falls asleep sooner than he thought he would be able to, and his mind is dreamless and opaque. 

****

Calum is in full “cheer-up-Michael” mode the next day, and Michael doesn't bother telling him it's unnecessary because it's sort of awesome. Calum trying to cheer someone up is pretty much him initiating as much physical contact as possible, so it means hugs and slaps on the back and occasionally weird humping. It's grounding, each touch like a little reminder, like a chime going, “best friends! Best friends!” 

They share headphones in the car, squeezed together. Calum sits across from him when they eat dinner and tangles their legs together, which turns into a kicking war that is way more fun than it is painful. Michael tweets about “National Girlfriend Day” at Calum, and they trade ugly selfies to cement their girlfriend status to each other. During the show that night, Calum keeps giving him shout-outs and bouncing over to Michael's side of the stage even more than usual to sing into his mic and mess with him. Calum knows that Michael has a huge weakness for cute things, and Calum also knows how cute he can be—it's a lethal combination. When they tumble onto the bus at the end of the day, Michael is torn between wanting to squeeze Calum like a teddy bear or punch him a little, just to burn off the excess energy Calum's attention has built up in him. 

Luke and Ashton are hyped up too; it was a good show, one of their better ones this week. Luke tosses out the idea of going out, and Michael starts to resign himself to losing both him and Calum for the evening, but Calum surprises all of them by tucking into Michael's side and saying he wants to stay in. Somehow, they all end up agreeing to stay on the bus with some of the crew, and they watch a really loud movie with a lot of explosions. Michael has no idea what it's about because Calum keeps leaning up close to Michael's ear to whisper really dumb jokes, dissolving halfway through them into tickling giggles. Ashton, of course, gets heavily invested in the romantic side plot onscreen, and he recruits some of their security to throw cushions at Michael and Calum to try and get them to shut up. The whole band ends up screaming and wrestling, with Luke curled up and complaining at the bottom of the pile, security egging them on and ignoring them in equal measure, until Cookie, the driver, finally comes back to tell them to “shut the fuck up!” (They all love Cookie. He fits into the band crew family really well.)

The bus pulls into a tiny gas station rest stop just off the highway somewhere around 1am. Luke and Ashton stay on the bus, arguing sleepily over the episode of SpongeBob they had put on after the movie ended and everyone else went to bed, but Calum tugs Michael off the bus onto the cracked pavement, yelling to Cookie that they'll only be a minute. Dave, their head of security, who never seems to sleep, stumbles off after them to keep an eye on them from a couple metres away. 

“I'm tired,” Michael whines, slumping against the side of the bus. “Get Ashton to go running off with you.” Usually exploring things together was Calum and Ashton's thing. Michael liked sitting on his ass. 

“I'm not running off anywhere,” Calum says, his eyes bright. “And you're already out here, so you might as well stay.” 

Michael makes a weird burping noise and Calum imitates him before grinning and wandering off aimlessly across the lot, silhouetted against the candy bright lights of the closet-sized convenience store beside the gas pumps. 

Michael wasn't lying—he's tired, terribly so at this point, but he's riding it like a fading high, a low buzz of contentment keeping him awake. There's an almost magical veneer of grit and glow to the gas station and the hulking spine of forest behind it. Calum looks small and slight, kicking at pebbles, shoulders tilted almost perpendicular to the ground. He's bending to poke at something, and Michael looks away, feeling as pleasantly insubstantial as the smoke he can taste in the air. 

They could be anywhere in the world right now—it's impossible to tell with the dark and the circle of trees around the rest stop, and the thought feels like freedom instead of fear. 

“Mike,” Calum says, and he's skipping back over to Michael's side, one hand held out in front of him. “Look what I found.” 

There's a metal bead sitting in the cup of Calum's palm, little notches cross-hatched in it, and Michael feels a swell of instant recognition, like spotting a friend at the other end of the hallway. 

“We had a bunch of these when we were kids, didn't we?” he says excitedly, holding his hand out so Calum can tip the bead into it. “Yeah, they had different designs and we wanted to collect all of them between the two of us.” 

They had come in the cereal box and they had been the start of the very first real conversation Michael had ever had with Calum—Calum had seen him playing with his bead in class and had asked to trade. The cereal company's promotion was only for a couple months, and presumably it was only done in Australia. Finding one of those beads here now, on tour, parked by chance at a tiny rest stop in the middle of America just because Cookie thought they were running low on gas, feels like the kind of serendipity that doesn't happen to Michael.   

“I traded you this one for your one with flames on it,” Calum says. “I mean, the one you have that looks like this.” 

“I lost it,” Michael says. “Found the jar I kept them in last time we were at home, but I only had like, two of them left. Lost this one for sure, I know.” 

“How fucking dare you,” Calum says, flushed and excited. “I gave you that.” 

“You traded it,” Michael corrects. 

“Well, fine,” Calum says. “I'm giving you this one. Wait—” 

He bends down sharply, so sudden it makes Michael dizzy. He's on one knee in front of Michael, fiddling with the laces on his right shoe, neck bent so all Michael can see is the stretch of his own legs and the top of Calum's head dipped almost between them. Michael feels unsteady, looking at the brush of Calum's hair against his thigh—he's more tired than he thought. 

“Here,” Calum says, lurching back upright. He's got one of his black shoelaces in his hand, and he feeds the end of it through the metal bead before holding it out to Michael. “Friendship bracelet.” 

“That's a shoelace,” Michael says. 

Calum grabs his wrist and Michael lets him, watching as Calum ties the shoelace around his arm. 

“It's a friendship bracelet,” Calum says. “I made it for you, and you're going to hurt my feelings if you take it off.” 

“Whatever,” Michael says, but he doesn't stop Calum from tying a huge, looping bow. The metal bead digs into his skin a little bit, right over his pulse point. “Thanks, I guess. Don't you need this though, for your shoe?” 

“I've got other shoes and laces,” Calum says. “Only one you though.” 

Michael is glad it's dark, because he knows he's making a stupid face. Calum is too close, though—he might be able to see it anyway. 

“Aw, babe,” he simpers. “I didn't know you cared so much.” 

Calum laughs, swaying in front of Michael's eyes, closer and then farther away all at once. “Only for you, honey.” 

Michael ducks his head and stares at the bracelet. He meant it the other day when he said he couldn't really be homesick on tour with his band around—they are home to him. They are family. But Calum in particular has always been the most familiar, the biggest slice of home Michael carries with him. He figures it's 'cause out of all of them, he's known Calum the longest by far. They are classified by their elasticity—Michael and Calum can bounce apart, spend more time with other people than each other, and then be just as close when they get back to each other. Calum is a constant in Michael's life, tied to him as surely as an impromptu friendship bracelet. He's unchangeable. 

Cookie finishes pumping up the gas, and Dave ushers them back on the bus. Ashton's already disappeared to bed; Luke is sitting up in the lounge, sunken-eyed and mouthing along to Patrick's lines. Calum makes the executive decision that Luke's going to bed, and he drags Luke to his feet. 

“You too,” Calum says, and it's so uncharacteristically mother-hen that Luke and Michael both burst into laughter. 

“Shut up,” Calum mumbles. “You guys never take me seriously. I'm leaving the band.” 

“Nope,” comes Ashton's voice from behind the curtain to his bunk. “You're not allowed. Now will you all fucking go to bed.” 

The bus kicks and sputters beneath them, coming alive to move back onto the highway, and Calum takes the moment of distraction to sack Luke in the balls and run for the bathroom first. His hand catches on Michael's wrist as he passes, fingers skipping over the makeshift bracelet, and he glances back once to grin at Michael, that stupidly bright one that Michael can't help but return.

“Fuck you, Calum,” Luke wheezes. 

Calum cackles, muffled through the bathroom door, and Michael tightens the knot on his bracelet.

He strips down to his boxers to go to sleep, but he doesn't take the shoelace off for one second, the metal bead glinting in the corner of his vision like a reminder. 

He falls fast.

**** 

Calum is sitting on Michael's bedspread, his shorts still tacky with sweat and mud from soccer practice. Michael's whined at him to get off a few times now, both because his mum is going to get mad at him if it's dirty, and also because Calum sitting where Michael's jerked off makes him feel kind of weird in his stomach, but Calum is refusing to move. Michael's ignoring him as a result, staring determinedly at his computer screen. 

“You're losing,” Calum says loudly. 

“No, I'm not,” Michael says. “You don't know anything.”

His army is wiped out about five minutes later, and Calum laughs. Michael hates him for so many different reasons, especially when he turns around to stick out his tongue and Calum's lying back on his bed, legs spread at such an angle that Michael can almost see right up the leg of his shiny soccer shorts. 

“I told you you should've been the Zurgs,” Calum says. His lifts his head up and waves a hand at Michael, like he wants him to come lie down next to him. Michael stays sitting where he is, but he turns his chair so it points in Calum's direction. He grabs one of his metal beads off of his desk, rolling it between his fingers so he has something to do with his hands. 

“You don't even play StarCraft,” Michael says. “How would you know?” 

“They're the monster things, right?” Calum says. “Monster things are always the best choice.” 

Michael isn't in the mood to explain the finer points of StarCraft to Calum, not when he's spent the afternoon while Calum was at practice sweating out the idea of telling Calum what he thinks he wants to tell him. He rests his cheek on the back of his chair and stares at Calum blankly until Calum squirms up against Michael's pillows so he can meet Michael's eyes. 

“What?” Calum says. “Are you finally going to talk to me about whatever it is you were freaking out about?”

“I'm not freaking out about anything,” Michael shoots back. His hand clenches into a fist around the bead, one cold spot searing his palm. 

“You were weird around your mum and dad at dinner,” Calum says. “You're never weird around them. Or me.” 

“Janie,” Michael says suddenly. “From the girls' soccer team. Did you tell her you like her?” 

Calum scowls. “No, but that's because I heard her saying she likes some guy named Dave who is sixteen.” 

“I thought she was around our age,” Michael says. 

“She is!” Calum says indignantly. “Thirteen!” 

“Guess she likes older guys,” Michael says, tactfully not mentioning that he's older than Calum. 

“I'll be fourteen in a week,” Calum grumbles. Michael watches him pick at the neckline of his shirt, tugging at it until the sweaty edges of his collarbone are practically stabbing out into the air. He's probably going to want to peel it off soon, complaining about how gross he feels, and Michael wants to jump out of his skin.

“I always like the wrong person,” Calum sighs. 

“I think I might like guys,” Michael blurts. 

Calum stares at him, his face a perfect picture of shock. It would be funny if Michael didn't feel like vomiting all over the floor. 

“As well as girls,” he says. “Like, both. Maybe. I don't know.”

He hides his face in a hoodie he's got draped over the back of his chair. It's one that Calum had left here a couple days ago and keeps forgetting to take back home, and it smells half-sweaty and gross and boyish, which isn't really helping Michael right now. 

“Are you serious?” Calum asks. His voice has gone high and nervous, strung tight like a laundry line. Michael feels like a piece of underwear flapping in the breeze, just barely clipped on. 

Michael shrugs. “I said I don't know. I'm not like...sure.” 

Another pregnant pause. Over the folds of the hoodie, Michael can see Calum staring down at the bedspread, his brow furrowed. He doesn't look angry, just deep in thought. Michael can feel denials and just kidding's lined up like soldiers at the back of his throat, dying to fling themselves off his tongue to protect him. He swallows hard and remembers the way he feels prickly sometimes in the boys change room, the disjointed thoughts he has in gym class. He's not lying, is the thing. He's not sure about anything. 

“It's not like there's a bunch of boys I know who...who would wanna kiss me or do other stuff,” Michael babbles. “I can't really test it out so it's this weird thing in my head. Like, what's it like to touch another dick, or, or suck it, or—I don't know, maybe I'd hate it all, maybe I'm wrong and this is nothing, I—” 

He cuts off when Calum slides abruptly down on the bed and curls over onto his side, hands clutching anxious fistfuls of his shorts at the top of his thighs. 

“Shut up,” Calum says tensely. 

A devastating rush of heat shoots up Michael's neck, climbing to his eyes. He can feel his expression crumbling, and he knows he's about to cry. He's dropped the bead somehow, and his hands are empty now. 

“Sorry,” he says, and his voice sounds distant, strained. Calum looks up abruptly, and Michael lurches back in his seat, swiping angrily at his eyes. “Sorry, I said I wasn't sure, I'm probably not, so you don't need to stop being my friend, I'm probably not—” 

“No, Mikey, I didn't mean it like that,” Calum says urgently, sitting back up. “I just...I just wanted you to stop talking about like...dicks and stuff, 'cause I—” 

Calum's nervous fists on his thighs are framing an awkward, obvious bulge in his shorts, and Michael coughs up a wet cousin of a laugh, surprised and relieved. Calum doesn't hate him, Calum just can't control his dick. 

“You know I've got like...a problem with that, be quiet!” Calum says. He grabs a pillow off of Michael's bed and throws it, narrowly missing Michael's head. “It's never properly...down, especially not when people are talking about like...blowjobs and shit!” 

Michael's laughing for real now, almost unable to stop. It's a building hysteria in his chest, new relief warring with the panic still gaining footholds inside him. He thinks of Calum confiding to him at school a couple weeks ago that he kept getting hard when he was talking to girls or watching movies with girls in them, or even just sitting in class doing nothing. Michael had laughed at him then, ignoring the unsteadiness in his gut, and had been a useful human shield anytime Calum hissed for help.  

“Shut up!” Calum whines. “You suck!" 

“You wish,” Michael said, and it's such an instinctive shit-talking response that he doesn't think anything of it until Calum makes a tiny, kicked sound, one of his hands falling from his leg to press down on the tented fabric of his crotch. 

They stare at each other for a second, Michael's eyes flicking from Calum's face to his hand on his dick. There's a sick idea stretching heavy from his gut to his throat. 

“I could,” Michael says softly. “I mean, I trust you more than anybody and like, Janie isn't exactly here to help you with that, and I could just...” 

“You need to test it out,” Calum says, always on Michael's wavelength. “Like, if you like guys.” 

“Yeah,” Michael says. He's getting hard, and he hopes Calum can't see it even though he already knows Calum's got a boner. “I could just help you out and it would help me see if it's something I...like. It doesn't have to be weird.” 

Calum swallows, adam's apple shooting up and down like the slide of a shotgun barrel. “Okay.” 

Neither of them move. Michael has an invitation to touch Calum's cock, and he's paralyzed in his chair, terrified that this has just been talk and the second he tries to reach for Calum it's all going to dissolve into accusations and expressions of disgust.  

“If I could just—touch it, first,” he says stumblingly, his mind going white hot and hazy just at the idea. 

“Yeah,” Calum says. “Yeah, okay.” 

Michael can't look at Calum's face anymore, and his gaze drops, getting stuck on Calum's crotch, what little he can see of stretched fabric through Calum's clenched fingers. It's all sort of a blur when he stands up—one second he's in the chair and the next he's kneeling on the bed in front of Calum, sharing the same breathing space. Calum's skinny chest is pushing out against his shirt in rabbit-quick inhales, and his knuckles are chalk white where he's grabbing onto his shorts. His hand is still covering his dick.

“Calum,” Michael says. “You gotta, you gotta lemme—” 

He gestures helplessly at Calum's lap. Calum stares at him for a second longer, seemingly frozen, and then he catches up all at once; his hands jerk away from his shorts and clap onto his face. He falls backwards on the bed, sprawling out with his fingers digging pale trenches into his cheeks, and his cock is right there, right in front of Michael, a little rise in the fabric like a hill on the landscape of Calum's body. 

The back of Michael's throat feels hot and slimy like it gets when he's on the verge of throwing up. He can't stop swallowing, staring down at Calum stretched out like an offering. 

“Okay,” he mutters to himself. “Okay.” 

He sets his palm to the curve of Calum's dick, misjudging the distance and accidentally grinding down hard right away, Calum's thigh tense under his knuckles. Calum makes a weird, choked noise, and Michael freezes, only barely touching him. The material of Calum's shorts is sticking to Michael's sweaty hand, and the heat of Calum's cock is burning through it like it's made of paper. Michael is two seconds away from sprinting out of the room and shoving his hands under cold water; he's two seconds away from yanking Calum's shorts down and rubbing his face all over his dick. 

“Okay?” he asks urgently. His world is being flipped on its head right now; he needs Calum here with him, or nothing makes sense. 

“Yes,” Calum squeaks. “Yeah, Michael, you can—”

**** 

“—wake up!” 

There's a clattering, ripping sound and light pours onto Michael's face. Michael's entire body flips to panic mode so fast it's disorienting; he shoves himself backwards until his shoulders hit a wall, his eyes flying open, hands grasping for some kind of shield. All he can reach is twisted, sweaty sheets, and he clutches at them, blinking white spots away until Ashton's face comes into view. 

“Ew, gross,” Ashton says, turning away to yell down the hall. “Michael's got a boner!” 

“Shut the fuck up!” Michael yells, fumbling for the curtain Ashton's torn open. He yanks it back across the opening of his bunk, the world turning a dreamy, filtered red, and he stares at the grain of the fabric next to the white granite lump of his fist, trying to make his breathing slow down. 

“Someone's grumpy,” Ashton says, his voice getting distant as he presumably moves away. Michael can hear him talking to Zop, their tour manager, heckling Luke, and then Calum, and the sound of Calum's voice answering back is like an electric shock down his body, his cock twitching. He lets go of the curtain and sinks back against the wall, trying to get his bearings, because Calum's voice sounds wrong, too deep, too different from what he'd been hearing seconds ago. 

He's in his bunk on the tour bus. He's nineteen, not fourteen, and it was a dream. It was just a dream. A really, really weird one, but a dream all the same. 

“You've got ten minutes to be up and on your feet, Michael,” Zop calls. 

“Stop jerking off and come for breakfast, Mike!” Calum yells, and Michael almost has a heart attack. 

A dream, a dream, a dream, a dream, he tells himself. It's like a scrolling ad in his mind, like the strip of news moving along the bottom of the tv screen. It's his mantra as he gets dressed and brushes his teeth and tries to face the day. It was a dream. 

They've got the day off until the show that evening, and since they have a free block of time set out, Michael isn't in the mood to do anything except play League in his hotel room until his brain leaks out his ears. He needs to do something with his hands, and he needs to not be looking at Calum. Calum doesn't seem to get this though; he isn't in the mood to go traipsing across whatever city they're in with Ashton and Luke (for once), and he invites himself into Michael's space easily, grinning like he's just allowed to do that, fuck with Michael's head like that. 

“You sure you guys don't wanna come?” Ashton asks. 

Michael grunts, already halfway sunk into his game. Calum is a soft dent in the bed beside him, about a foot away, and Michael is not thinking about him.  

“Nah,” Calum says. “I'm gonna spend some time with my best friend here.” 

“No. I hate you,” Michael says tonelessly. 

“You love me,” Calum says certainly. 

“Go away,” Michael says. 

Calum smiles wider. Michael's mouth twitches, and he fights down an answering smile. Stupid Calum, being a beacon of goddamn sunshine. Ashton's already left, muttering something Michael probably doesn't want to hear. He wishes they had stayed, both of them—there's no way he's telling anyone what his stupid head came up with when he was unconscious last night, but he could use a cuddle from Luke, or Ashton's vague-ass advice.

It's almost normal for the first hour, Calum just scrolling through his phone and listening to music on his own, and Michael killing things on his computer. The guys know that trying to engage Michael in conversation while he's on the computer is pretty useless, and Michael uses this as a shield against possible interaction, making sure to stare as intently at the screen as he can anytime he sees Calum look over in his peripheral vision. He can see the metal bead on his makeshift bracelet winking up at him and he wishes he'd taken it off earlier because it's making his chest go all tight with guilt. It feels awful—he hasn't felt this awkward around Calum since they were first starting to become friends, and he hates that a dumb dream is making him feel this way. 

The thing that's messing with him is that it hadn't felt like a dream. The details haven't spun together as the day goes on, and the colours and voices and sensations hadn't been off in any way. His room had looked exactly like he remembered it looking when he was a kid, and Calum had been even wearing the right pair of soccer shorts—the ones with the number “1” peeled off on one leg so that his right said “19” and the other just said “9”. It hadn't felt like a dream; it had felt like a memory. 

Michael may feel fucked up sometimes, but he knows that's impossible. Obviously it's impossible. He could never have forgotten something like that. He never propositioned Calum when they were fourteen. He did remember having some of the feelings from the dream, the stuff about being uncomfortable changing in front of other boys and feeling weird in gym class, but he'd never come to the conclusion that he was gay because of it. He swears he never thought that, but it made so much sense in the dream that it's fucking him up. He knows what's real, but it's like there's two overlapping memories of himself now, fighting it out in his head, and he just wants it all to shut up. 

Calum touches his elbow and Michael jerks violently. 

“Geez,” Calum says. He's looking at Michael weirdly, and Michael tries not to die. “Just wanted to ask if you wanted to share my headphones.” 

“There's no one else in here, just play it out loud,” Michael snaps. “What do you even need headphones for right now.” 

His character dies onscreen and Michael swears loudly. 

“I like headphones,” Calum mumbles. 

“I gotta piss,” Michael says.

In the bathroom he stares at himself in the mirror, soaking selfishly in the absurdly melodramatic feelings in his chest for a minute. This shouldn't be hitting him so hard, weird memory-type feelings aside. He once had a dream that he was dating his mother, and clearly he didn't secretly want to be doing that. Dreams are fucked up. They don't mean gay things in real life just because gay things happened in them. 

“This is not the end of the world,” he tells himself sternly once he's done being sorry for himself. “And you can't take this out on Calum.”

“Are you talking to yourself in there?” Calum yells through the door. 

“No!” Michael yells back. “I'm talking to my dick. Leave us alone!” 

“You know, if you two need quality time together I could always go find Luke and Ash.” 

Yes, Michael thinks. Please go do that. “Don't be stupid,” he shouts, because he's stupid. 

Michael flushes the toilet and runs the tap for a couple seconds so it seems like he did something other than give himself a pep talk in there. When he pulls the bathroom door open, he can see that Calum is just where he left him, lying on the bed next to Michael's computer. Looking at him drives all the breath out of Michael's chest and he leans heavily against the doorjamb, trying to reconcile years of friendship with the dream-version of a thirteen-year old Calum sprawled out so similarly on a bed. The Calum in front of him now is taller and broader, and he's in skinny jeans, not shorts, big hands folded around his phone, one earbud in and the other one lying haphazardly on the bed in the scrape of space Michael's body had left. The curtains are pulled and they didn't bother turning the main light on, so the whole long sprawl of him is existing in a grey half-light, making his features soft and uncertain. 

Calum glances up and catches Michael staring. 

“What?” he says. 

“Nothing,” Michael says automatically. “Just—” 

“What?” Calum repeats. 

“Give me a hug,” Michael says, stretching his arms out. That's how he solves most problems. Through cuddles.

Calum smiles, his eyes becoming squints. 

“Awww,” he says, clearly delighted. “Come over here.” 

Michael lurches away from the bathroom door and crosses the room in a couple shaky steps, collapsing onto the bed sideways across Calum's body, forcing a grunt out of him. 

“This is not a hug,” Calum protests, squirming. 

“I can hug in whatever way I want,” Michael says. “Asshole.” 

Calum kicks and wriggles until he's stretched out alongside Michael, their feet sticking off the side of the bed like diving boards. He's as warm and bright as a tubing of neon light beside Michael, and Michael presses his cheek against Calum's shoulder, letting it radiate into him. 

“Cuddle,” Calum coos, and wraps his arms around Michael. 

They lie there for a long, syrupy moment. Michael feels like he could maybe fall asleep like this, and he flails out an arm to shut his laptop before it dies. 

“I'm sending you good brain vibes,” Calum says, rubbing his palm over Michael's skull. Michael focuses very hard on not tensing. 

“Why, do I seem crazier than normal?” he mutters. 

“You're not crazy, Mike,” Calum says. “Don't call yourself that.” 

“I can call myself crazy if I want,” Michael says. He says it jokingly all the time, but Calum always gets sensitive over it if he thinks Michael's being serious. It's kind of nice, honestly. “But I'm okay. It's just, you know—” 

“Tour stuff?” 

“Yeah,” Michael says, pouncing gratefully on the excuse. “Tour stuff.” 

“Well, you've got us,” Calum says. “Like you said the other day.” 

Michael hums, and thankfully Calum drops it, leaving them in contemplative silence. 

Calum's phone buzzes and he pulls his arm away from Michael's back so he can check his messages, leaving a strip of coldness where it used to be. 

“Huh,” Calum grunts, and then he shoves his phone in front of Michael's face. “Look at this dick.” 

It's a picture from Ashton of Luke dramatically clutching at a cardboard cut-out of Selena Gomez, his face all pink with a particular embarrassment that says he may have been talked into this but he's actually definitely down. 

“Where even are they?” Michael grumbles. “How did they find that?” 

“Up, get up,” Calum says. “We gotta respond. They can't go thinking they're funnier than us.” 

“Why does that involve me getting up?” Michael asks. Calum is already sliding away to his feet, and Michael mourns the loss of the cuddle already. 

“What do we have in this room that I could hold dramatically?” Calum asks. “Should I go for the bag or the lamp?” 

Michael sits up; his head spins a little, woozy—when did he last eat?—and Calum spins with it, moving around the room like a planet in orbit, his face lit up with a kaleidoscope grin. 

“Lamp would be pretty funny,” Michael says. 

“Yeah, but is it pseudo cardboard cut-out girlfriend funny?” Calum asks. 

Michael shrugs. The room has stopped wobbling, and Calum's smile is aimed directly at him now, making it impossible for him not to return it. “We could just do it with the two of us.” 

Calum's eyes go cartoon wide and he stabs a finger at Michael. “Yes!” 

“You'd be the girlfriend, though, obviously,” Michael says. 

Calum adopts a pose similar to Cardboard Selena, one hand on his cocked hip and his lips pursed in a slight smile.

“How's this?” he asks, barely moving his mouth.

“Perfect,” Michael says. His heart won't shut up in his chest. It's too loud.

They have to find a spot to prop Calum's iPhone up so that it can see them both, and then they have to set an appropriate timer so they can press it and get into position, Michael running to drape over Calum's side like an octopus. They set it up to take a bunch of pictures at once and Michael loses his balance and knocks Calum sideways a couple of times so that when they look through the pictures some of them are just blurred smears of Michael's laughing face, Calum half pushed out of the frame.

“Beautiful,” Calum says, pausing on a picture where Michael's face got shoved down into Calum's chest, one of his arms thrown out behind him like he's about to start doing jazz hands. “What grace.”

“Shut up,” Michael says. “That was on you, you kept moving.”

“'Cause you were leaning on me!”

“Cardboard can't move, Calum, you're a terrible actor!”

They settle on one picture and send it, accompanied by about seventeen aubergine emojis and the panting tongue one. Ashton responds a couple minutes later with four devil emojis and 'you guys are weird', which totally means that they won.

'you're just jealous that you don't have a tour boyfriend like I do,' Calum types back, followed by the lips emoji and another aubergine. He looks back at Michael with his tongue poking out between his teeth, so pleased with his joke, like a puppy looking for approval, and Michael can't help but laugh. There's a wash of warmth going through him—Calum doesn't know what weird shit he's dreaming, and they can still do this. Best friends.

'why would i be jealous of that,' Ashton sends back. 'mike is grumpy all the time.”

“Slander!” Michael exclaims. “I'm gonna text him and tell him what I think of that.”

“I mean, he's not wrong,” Calum says. “But it's not like he's really got a leg to stand on when he gets super grumpy at the drop of a hat. Besides, I still love you even when you're grumpy.” 

He's grinning down at his phone, his cheeks sort of flushed from all the falling and laughing. His eyelashes look terribly long from this angle.

“You guys are all awful,” Michael says. “This is why I'm grumpy all the time.”

“Hey, I'm confessing my feelings for you here!” Calum protests. “Last time I do that, jesus. Give me my bracelet back.”

“No take-backs on friendship bracelets,” Michael says.

“There is if I say there are! Give it back!”

“No!”

Calum chases him around the room for five minutes, both of them screaming increasingly ridiculous things, until Calum manages to tackle him down onto the bed and sit on him. Michael goes limp, letting Calum crow in victory, and then flips them over as soon as Calum shifts his weight like he's going to get off. Calum squeals when he hits the bedspread, bouncing up a little into the knee Michael sets on his back. He flails an arm back and Michael fumbles with it before getting his fingers around Calum's wrist and slamming it down to the bed next to his face. Calum's cheek is shoved into the sheets, a pillow half underneath his neck and making his hair fluff up with static electricity, and he's grinning like mad, eyes closed, almost peaceful.

“It's my bracelet,” Michael pants. His fingers flex around Calum's wrist—he presses down a little harder just to watch Calum's eyelids flutter, his smile take on a sharp edge.

“Yeah, it is,” Calum agrees happily.

This is how it ought to be.

****

The show that night feels electric, the wave of screams like the buzz of some huge machine pumping energy into Michael. He can't keep still, bouncing over to Ashton's drums and then to Luke's side to push him away from his mic and shout the lyrics, reach over and mess with his guitar way more times than usual. Luke plays back as awesome as always, sweaty and smiling under the lights, but it's Calum who is really feeling the same high as Michael. He seems to somehow always be there whenever he isn't having to sing, shoving his face in Michael's neck and grinning like a hyena. The crowd eats it up, and it's a feedback loop of excitement going from the audience to them and back again.

It's Michael's turn to pick someone from the audience, and he knows exactly who to get: a tall guy on his side of the stage who has been going nuts all night with air guitar solos. He looks dazzled and thrilled when he gets onto the stage, and he keeps looking at Michael, at his hands and how he holds his guitar, and even though Michael should be used to being looked at, what with the whole “celebrity” thing, it always feels a little cooler when it comes from someone who looks like the kind of guy Michael would've been jealous of in high school. As a reward to the guy—Robbie, he says his name is—for having good taste in favourite band members, Michael slings an arm around his shoulder and compliments him 'till the guy is blushing and pleased.

“You're so good-looking,” Luke says to Robbie, joining in on the compliment fest. “Like, for real.”

“I should just go backstage and you can play the rest of the set for me,” Michael says. “I'm ruining the view up here.”

Over Robbie's shoulder Michael can see Calum raise his mic to his mouth like he's about to say something, but before he can get it out, Robbie is blurting, “Are you kidding me, man? You're fucking hot.”

The crowd screams. Robbie's face is very close, and Luke was definitely right about the good-looking thing, so it's even more flattering that he thinks Michael is hot. Michael blinks at him, a smile building up, and Robbie goes red and stammers, “My sister loves you.”

“Your sister has good taste,” Calum says loudly.

“Have you played guitar before?” Michael says, a bit reluctantly; he knows they've got to get back on track, but he's a sucker for compliments.

“Uh, yeah, I have,” Robbie says. “Been playing since I was ten.”

“Aw, yeah,” Ashton yells. “Show us!”

Of course he shreds it up better than any of them, and Michael gets half a music boner over the sight of him leaning back with the guitar settled on his hips, playing like a god. Luke bows down to him multiple times, and Ashton actually climbs out from behind his drums to come over and point at Robbie while making loud squawking noises. When Robbie's done and they've sufficiently praised him, Michael hands the guitar off to Luke and then sweeps Robbie into a congratulatory hug, overflowing with the urge to spread the love. Robbie yells something indecipherable in Michael's ear, his hands slipping from Michael's back down over the seat of his pants, and Michael pulls back so he can get a good swat in at Robbie's ass in retaliation. Robbie jumps and the crowd loves it and Michael's buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, grinning at Robbie as he makes his way back down into the crowd.

Playing live is fucking great.

“Whoooo!” Calum screams when he gets his talking bit. “Who is having a good time tonight?”

The arena explodes and Michael can barely make himself stop smiling long enough to get a proper drink of water.

“I dunno, I don't know if that was enthusiastic enough,” Calum says. “I don't know, some of you guys might be having a shitty time, I'm just not sure. I said, WHO IS HAVING A GOOD TIME TONIGHT?”

Michael's pretty sure the fans break some sort of record with the next sound. He makes eye contact with Luke and they share a dazed grin—it doesn't stop knocking them out, how fucking awesome performing is.

“I think they're having a good time, Calum,” Ashton quips.

“Shhhh, Ash, I'm trying to commune with the fans here,” Calum says. “I feel like some of you out there really get me, 'cause I was seeing some signs earlier that really just...spoke to me.”

He squints out into the audience.

“Michael Clifford is my life and soul,” he reads out, and Michael jerks his head up, gaping. “And right next to that: 'Michael, please'—actually, I don't think I can read that one out loud.”

Luke lets out a bark of laughter and Michael is frozen on the spot, staring over at the left side of the stage with a dumb expression creeping its way up his face.

“Are you guys friends?” Calum asks. “Or are you like, mortal enemies? Battling over Michael?”

Michael recovers enough to duck in towards his mic and say, “plenty of me to go around, guys, no need to fight.”

“It would be kind of cool though,” Luke says.

“Start a mosh pit over Michael,” Calum says. “I'd have to jump down and join in though.”

“I don't think that's really a compliment to Mike,” Ashton says. “You'd mosh over anything.”

“You say that like it's a bad thing,” Calum says. He finally looks over to the right, like he's only now feeling the force of Michael's gaze, and he catches Michael's eye, his grin somehow growing even wider. Michael's cheeks feel distorted with his own expression, like he's never gonna look the same after being this happy.

“Well, sadly we aren't going to be moshing right now,” Calum says, turning back to the crowd. “Because we're going to slow it down for you. I want to see everybody singing along to this next song. Here's Amnesia.”

Halfway through the song, Calum's voice cuts off, and Michael looks over to see Calum backing away from the mic, staring at the stage floor. He shakes off whatever weird distraction it was really quickly and ducks back in to finish the line, and Michael doesn't think anything more of it until a couple songs later, when Calum comes running up to him during Luke's solo verse.

His eyes are a night sky, stage lights reflected in them like stars, and he crowds up next to Michael, shifting him so their backs are tilted to the audience. He opens his hand, and there's a metal bead sitting in his palm, one with little squares etched on it.

“Someone threw it onstage,” Calum says. “During Amnesia. Just threw it at me.”

He looks full of wonder, and Michael sort of feels the same. He holds out his wrist without even questioning it, and Calum laughs.

“Fucking greedy,” Calum says. “Maybe I want this one.”

They duck back to the mics for the chorus. Calum decides to share Michael's instead of running all the way back to his side of the stage, and even when Michael's eyes fall shut with the weight of the music, he can still feel the buzz of Calum right next to him, almost touching where they're both leaning into the mic. His eyes blink to half-mast and there's the side of Calum's face and the cushion of his mouth, outlined strangely by the fringe of Michael's eyelashes. Michael feels a bit light-headed—his own voice is coming to him from a distance and Calum's is the only thing he can really hear.

When they all leave the stage after the main set and bundle together backstage, scrubbing hands over each others' backs and shoulders and hair with the show high of needing to run and jump and touch all at the same time, Calum shoves in next to Michael. He pulls the metal bead out from his pocket and fumbles to untie Michael's bracelet and thread the bead on next to the first one.

“This is like the one you took from the cereal box at my house the first time you stayed over,” Calum says to him over the thunder of distant screaming and clapping.

“You tried to fight me for it,” Michael says. He doesn't look away from Calum's face as Calum ties the bracelet back on.

“I did not,” Calum says.

“You definitely did,” Michael says, and then Ashton is waving his arms at them and they're storming back onstage to the shrieks of the crowd. 

In “Good Girls”, Calum is too far away, playing to his side of the audience. Michael squirms up to Luke and makes stupid faces at him until he breaks in the middle of a line and peels out a high, adorable giggle, but Calum doesn't look up at that. The bracelet was retied too loose, and the beads are knocking against Michael's guitar, getting in his way.  

On the other side of the stage, Calum sings out, “I swear she lives in that library...Michael, what does she say?”

Michael's head is balloon empty and he hip bumps Luke away from his mic to lean in and squeal, “Calum is so fucking hot!”

The roar is incredible—exactly what he was going for. A girl directly in front of them looks like she's going to maybe pass out, and Michael makes sure to catch her eye and grin wide as he runs back over to his own mic. He's gotta spread this feeling somehow, especially to the people who appreciate his wit the most.

Michael can hear the laugh in Calum's voice in the chorus of the song, and he's on top of the world, loving this life more than anything.

They go out that night, all four of them, and Michael drunkenly tells the other three that they're the best things that have ever happened to him. Luke and Calum hug him, and Ashton coos “awwww” and pats clumsily at his face. They all smell like booze and home, and Michael loses long liquid minutes trying to figure out if music has a smell or if it should. It's a good night, but Ashton and Michael decide to go back early, not wanting to go as nuts as Calum and Luke are clearly aiming to go. When they announce that they're leaving, Calum lunges across the booth they're in and hooks a finger in Michael's bracelet.

“Remember,” he says in that serious way he gets sometimes when he's drunk. “That you gotta wear it. And...”

He loses track of what he's saying, blinking down at the table.

“What does he have to wear?” Ashton asks, completely lost.

“And?” Michael says.

Calum's head snaps back up. “And...I really AM fucking hot.”

Luke laughs so hard he slides off the booth.

Michael doesn't take the bracelet off to sleep. The hotel bed is too big, he thinks hazily. He needs some sort of company.

****

They're in Calum's room this time—Calum's mum and dad are out shopping with Calum's sister, and the house is empty. Michael feels too big for his clothes, too warm, like he's melting into the couch, and Calum is soundly whooping his ass at Banjo Tooie minigames.

“So,” Michael says when they get back to the menu screen after Calum's latest victory. “You. You remember like...a couple weeks ago?”

Calum shrugs. “Remember what? You wanna play the one where we're bees next?”

Michael wants to swallow his tongue, but he's been working up the courage to bring this up since yesterday, when David, who sat next to Michael in science class, made a sneering comment about what he thought Michael's mouth was good for, and Michael had felt a sickly churn of heat along with the humiliation. If he can't tell Calum this stuff, he can't tell anyone. He sticks his hand briefly in his pocket to run his fingers over the ridges of the metal bead he'd brought with him, just for good luck.

He needs to keep better track of his part of the bead collection, he thinks vaguely. He keeps losing them.

“When I—” Michael scrunches up his face. “When I...you know.”

He waits 'till Calum looks over and then makes an awkward fist in the air over his own lap and pumps it up and down a few times. Calum's face floods red.

“Oh,” he says, his voice cracking.

“Yeah,” says Michael nervously. They haven't talked about it since—Calum sort of went useless and floppy after he came and Michael had been freaked out enough by the come on his hands that he called Calum's parents to say Calum felt ill and wanted to go home. The next day Calum seemed down with pretending it had never happened, and Michael was more than okay with that at the time.

Calum nods his head, staring intently down at his own hands on his game controller. “Did you, um.” He stops, licking his lips. “Did—you never told me—did it help you figure things out? You didn't tell me.”

Michael drops his controller on the couch next to him and shoves his hands under his armpits, trapping them against his sides so he can't do something stupid like reach out for Calum.

“I don't know,” Michael says, and it feels like a stupid thing to say, but it's the truth. “I mean, I didn't hate it and I got like, hard and stuff. But what if it was just the idea of like, any sex that was what made me get, like—I mean, I've touched my own dick, so it's not really that gay to touch someone else's, right?”

“Right,” Calum says. “So you think you're...not gay? Or bi or whatever?” He flushes even more when Michael looks at him, surprised. “I looked it up.”

Something about Calum crouched in front of a computer, googling things to help him understand what Michael's going through is terribly endearing, and Michael has to fight down a pleased smile, not wanting Calum to think he's making fun of him.

“Well, see,” he says, “the other day David told me that...that I had like a cocksucking mouth—”

“Fuck David,” Calum says hotly. “If he's saying shit things to you, I can beat him up.”

He looks genuinely angry, like he'd actually take on a kid twice his size over Michael's virtue, and it makes Michael warm down to the pit of his stomach.

“He'd crush you,” Michael says. “But no, I'm not mentioning it 'cause I'm mad or upset or whatever, I just...when he said it I felt kind of like...”

Calum is watching him, unblinking. His fingers have gone loose around his controller, his right thumb braced beside the joystick.

“Kind of like what?” Calum asks.

“Like maybe that would be something I'd want to do,” Michael finishes quickly. The words leave his mouth a bit like vomit—he feels gross, hot and sweaty, right after they pass his tongue, but there's a relief also, his stomach settling a little.

Calum's face is impossible to read when he's thinking, so Michael looks at the curve of his hunched back instead, slouched forward into himself like a skinny slash of punctuation. There's a buzz in Michael's head, white noise, and he's half-hard in his shorts just from the memory of Calum pushing his hips up into Michael's hand. They haven't talked about it 'till now, but Michael hasn't stopped thinking about it. He doesn't know if it's just a sex thing, or a boy thing, or a Calum thing, but it's there when he closes his eyes, it's there when he's wide awake, it's there when Calum is right next to him. 

“Did you wanna test that too?” Calum says quietly.

A wave of heat shudders through Michael and he shoves one hand up through his hair, the other flashing down to cover his crotch in what he hopes is a subtle move. He's shocked and nauseous, but distantly he knows that this is what he was hoping for.

“Are you—are you actually asking me to suck you off?” Michael asks slowly.

“No!” Calum shouts. “Shut up!” He throws his controller at Michael, and it hits him in the side of his jaw, catching the edge of bone just hard enough to actually hurt.

“Oww!” Michael whines, shrinking back. Calum looks sort of pissed now, and Michael has no idea why since Calum's not the one putting himself on the line with all this weird sexuality stuff. “What was that for?”

“Don't say you want to suck dicks and then look at me weirdly if I offer to help or whatever because—because you wanted to use me as a human guinea pig before, so you can't look at me like I'm weird if I assume you want to—”  Calum breaks off, skinny chest heaving.

“I do want to,” Michael says. “I want to. I wasn't—” _Looking at you weirdly_ , is how he wants to end that sentence, except he's looking at Calum now and it is weird, especially since he can see Calum's got a half-chub like him.

“This can't get weird,” Calum says firmly. “We're friends, and I'm just—because we're friends.”

“Mouth is a mouth,” Michael rushes to assure him. They don't need more than one person having a gay crisis here, especially when Michael's sure Calum is one of the straightest people he knows. “It's only gay on my end, you're just, you're just...you're just being nice.”

Calum's mouth does a little seasick twist. “Right.”

“And it's only maybe gay on my end,” Michael corrects.

“Obviously.”

Five minutes later, Michael is awkwardly folded down on the ground between Calum's legs, Calum's knobbly knees framing his head as he tries to get his fumbling hands to work enough to get Calum's fly open. Michael can't look at Calum's face and he can't look at the bump of his cock where it's knocking into Michael's wrists, so he stares at Calum's stomach, at the shivering strip of skin where his shirt's been rucked up. It's somehow alien to him, different than the place Michael's wrapped an arm around or laid his head on or kicked in a fight a thousand and one times with Calum before. It's something sexual now, pulling in tight and shocked on a gasp when Michael gets his fingers on skin. It's all something new.

Taking Calum's dick in his hand maybe shouldn't feel new, because he's done it once before, but it still does. Michael pumps his hand automatically, soft, damp skin sliding in his sweaty grip, and stares now, numbly classifying Calum's dick by all the ways it is different from his own. Michael's got hair down there now, and Calum still has none, smooth like a baby or a porn star. Michael's cock is bigger, but he's always felt that it looks awkward, doesn't fit his body. Calum's looks right, looks like how cocks are supposed to look, and now that Michael is looking properly, he can't look away. He had kept his eyes shut for most of it last time, opening them only to get his grip and then to watch Calum come, gross and way too real all over Michael's hand. Now Calum's prick is right in front of his face, and Michael can see exactly how hard he is, a deep pink pushing little veins to the surface to press eagerly against Michael's palm. Dicks are fucking weird-looking, especially this close, and Michael is swallowing down a laugh almost as much as the fucking flood of saliva in his mouth.

Michael leans in and licks flat over the head of Calum's prick, fast, just to taste. Calum's hips twitch ever so slightly, and Michael stays close as he thinks, breathing on the wet spot he's made. Cock tastes like skin. He doesn't know what he expected.

“Are you gonna—” Calum starts after a long moment of Michael just sitting there, paralyzed, and the sound of his voice is so jarring and out of place in the headspace Michael's built up that he opens his mouth wide and shoves himself down on Calum's dick just to make him stop talking.

Calum lets out a shocked squeak that melts into a drawn out whine. Michael ignores him; Calum's dick isn't very big but it feels bigger in his mouth than it felt in his hand, and there's a fuzz of panic building in the back of his head about it all. He can't go very far down without it feeling like the back of his throat is gonna collapse or he's gonna burst into tears, but he tries anyway, because that's what you're supposed to do. He chokes a little and has to pull off, panting against the spit-slick skin of Calum's dick while he tries to fight back a little surge of humiliation and fear. He's only just started and he's already shit at this.

“Mikey,” Calum says, and there's a soft, hesitant touch on Michael's cheek, Calum's fingers just dipping in against his skin like he's testing the water. Michael can't help but look up at him then; Calum's tilting down towards him, his face eclipsing the ceiling light so there's a white glow around the round edges of his cheeks. Michael is struck dumb by the image, thinking dazzlingly of paintings in history class of people on their knees in church, seeing angels above them.

“You good?” Calum asks. His voice is shaking, higher than Michael's ever heard it, almost like a girl's. “You can—you can change your mind, you don't have to...”

He trails off awkwardly. His hand is warm against Michael's face, and he's still hard, dick shiny from Michael's mouth. Michael shifts his weight, and he's gone a little soft in his shorts, but he's starting to plump up again just from looking at Calum, clearly halfway to wrecked even though Michael's only been touching him for about ten seconds.

“No,” says Michael. “I've gotta do this—I want to, I—”

He braces his hands on the insides of Calum's thighs, sliding them up until the fabric of his shorts goes accordion folded under Michael's hands. Calum lets out a huge exhale and slumps back against the couch, spreading his legs farther apart at Michael's urging. He looks ridiculous with his dick poking out of the fly of his shorts and his boxers, looking like much more of a kid than Michael feels right now, but Michael's leaning back in like he's starving.

It's easier somehow, the second time he gets his mouth around the knob of Calum's prick. This here is just for him, Calum letting him do whatever he wants, and with the initial fear fading, Michael wants everything. He wants to suck until he can feel his cheeks pulling in, and he wants to rub his tongue hard against the bottom of Calum's cock, and he wants Calum to make that little hurt sound again. He did this to see if he likes it, and god, it feels right now like he does, he does—his own cock is heavy in his boxers, screaming to be touched, and the only thing overriding his desire to fuck up into his hand until he comes everywhere is the desire to stay here on his knees with his face burning and his lips stretched around Calum's dick.

Michael's got one hand curled around the base of Calum's cock, the other braced on Calum's hip, pinning him to the couch. Calum tries to thrust his hips a little bit and Michael shoves him back down, fingers biting into Calum's skin, and Calum let out a weird, shocked moan, like he liked that. There's a growing pressure against Michael's teeth, Calum's prick twitching fitfully against Michael's tongue, and Calum's sliding a hand through Michael's hair, petting him.

“Mikey,” he pants. “I'm gonna, I think I—”

Michael is going to pull off—he's going to. Calum's come was gross enough on his hands, so there's no way he wants it in his mouth. He's going to—except Calum looks sweaty and weak above him, taken apart by Michael's touch, and Michael feels suddenly powerful. He presses down harder on Calum's hip, hard enough to bruise, and sucks harder, Calum's cock snug up against the roof of his mouth. Calum's eyes squeeze shut and he's whimpering, hips ticking up into Michael's grip like he just wants to feel how he's being held down, and then suddenly there's a flood in Michael's mouth and he's—

****

—coughing into the sheets, his stomach cramping up, convulsive. He practically falls out of his bunk, his eyes still closed, and runs to the bathroom. He bangs inside and ducks down over the sink, spitting saliva and air out into the basin, still feeling the sticky, clingy phantom weight of—of come on his tongue.

His knees are sore, and he's too small for his body, rattling around in it like an ice cube in an empty cup. He's bent with his forehead pressed to the cold faucet in the bathroom of the tour bus, but he's also still fourteen and shoved in between Calum's legs. His throat contracts; he spits and spits. There's nothing in his stomach for him to throw up.

His body is burning up, heat radiating out from where his dick is hanging thick between his legs. He reaches down and gets his fist around it through his boxers, squeezing like a punishment. A vicious feeling of hate balls up in his gut for a second—he envisions clenching his fist hard enough that his dick pops like a water balloon, all signs of its betrayal gone—but the feeling can't last when his hand on himself just feels good.

“Fuck,” he hisses, and shoves his hand down into his boxers to touch himself bare.

The bathroom door is still open and there's no guarantee that none of the other boys were woken up by Michael's mad dash out of his bunk. He fumbles to pull it closed and then sags back against the wall, hand working automatically. He's trying to think of nothing at all, but disconnected images keep flashing in front of his eyes; dream Calum's shaking stomach; the mouth on the girl who'd sucked him off in a club bathroom three weeks ago; Harry Styles' dimples in the weird backstage lighting of the TMH tour; the neck tattoo of the sound tech from a couple days ago; Robbie playing the guitar; present Calum's shoulders, present Calum's waist, present Calum's smile—

Michael bites down on the side of his free hand as he comes, muffling the stupid sounds he's making. His eyes are screwed shut and his cheeks feel a little wet; he hasn't felt this pathetic in a long time.

He keeps his hand on his dick past the point of uncomfortableness, forcing himself not to pull away. He's fucking gross, so he deserves to sit and feel just how gross he is for a minute longer. He catches sight of the shoelace and the beads around his left wrist in the mirror and he pulls that hand out of his mouth and catches the bracelet between his teeth, yanking hard until the beads bite like blunt, animal teeth into his skin.

It's supposed to be a friendship thing. He and Calum are a friendship thing, and he's fucking it up.

****

Michael sits out in the back lounge and watches the sun rise through the window of the bus as they rattle along. He knows he's going to regret not trying to get back to sleep later in the day when he's going to be wilting and crashing on everybody, but he can't imagine returning to his bunk, terrified that he's going to open his eyes and be happily sucking Calum off again.

Because that's the thing, isn't it. That he wanted it in the dream.

Dreams aren't supposed to continue between days. You aren't supposed to have a specific place that you go when you sleep. Dreams are supposed to be different every time, things that you forget when you wake up, things that feel real only while you're asleep and then are obviously false when you're presented with the waking world again. By those definitions, he hasn't had dreams the past two nights.

The panic of it has dulled by the time the other boys wake up, and Michael doesn't freak out when Calum sleepily lurches into the lounge and collapses beside him.

“How long have you been up?” he mumbles.

Michael takes in a long, slow breath and looks down at Calum curled up next to him. His eyes have fluttered shut, and the meat of his cheek is pushed up into the bottom of one eye where he's got his face pressed to the back cushion of the bench, slowly sliding down. He's shirtless and Michael can see all the muscles from the stage and from working out packed in tight and lean along his ribs, bunching up under the immediate softness of the surface of his stomach. Michael feels a little numb. His temple itches where the burns were.

“Dunno,” Michael says.

“We're going straight to the venue, right?” Calum says.

“I think so,” says Michael. He stares out the window at the tipping rush of the world going by.

He can hear the murmur of Ashton and Luke's voices through the lounge door, Ashton coaxing Luke awake, and it feels like it's coming from a distance. He has the sudden urge to tell Calum that he actually is homesick, even though he thought he was over that now. His past is being warped in his sleep, and he's homesick for the simplicity that he remembers of his and Calum's childhood friendship, meeting in class over beads and playing games and talking and doing projects together. Calum's right there, and he misses him.

“You ever feel—” he starts, and then cuts himself off abruptly. Calum knows him too well. He can't make throwaway comments; Calum's going to know something is really wrong and he's not going to fucking drop it until Michael says something stupid.

When Calum doesn't prompt him for more, Michael looks down to see that Calum's fallen back asleep, face still smushed uncomfortably against the bench. He's so soft-looking, hair curling down over his forehead like a cherub. He looks younger in the milky morning light, all of his edges smoothed down until he's just the essentials. He could be any age. He could be thirteen.

He's going to drool all over the bench, Michael thinks, and then he's smiling like he's unhinged, a complete disconnect between his face and his brain.

“Shit,” he whispers, and he laughs into his cupped hands until Calum wakes back up and demands to know what's going on.

****

Michael finds a slip of paper in the back pocket of his jeans when he shimmies into them later that morning. It's the same pair he wore yesterday, because washing up is not a thing they're very good at doing, even though they technically have people to do it for them, but he has no memory of putting a memo of some sort there.

He unfolds it, and it's a phone number, Robbie's name scrawled next to it and a little winky face. 'Call me, if you want,' says the paper, and Michael stares blankly at it, remembering the moment when Robbie's hand slid down over his ass, the surprise of it. He hadn't suspected this, but it feels obvious now, and he quickly crumples the paper in his fist, looking up to see if any of the boys are nearby and have noticed what he's found. They aren't, and they haven't—the bus arrived at the venue a couple minutes ago and Calum and Ashton are already outside looking around, Luke sitting in the back lounge and texting someone. Michael is alone in the hallway between the bunks, standing awkwardly with his jeans half pulled up and no shirt on and a piece of paper crushed between his fingers telling him he could have something if he wanted.

He can't think about this. He shoves the number in his pocket, gets his clothes on and heads outside.

They have enough time before soundcheck and show that they could explore the city for an hour or two if they want, but they all seem to decide that that's more hassle than it's worth. Exploring the venue is enough. They get golf carts and race around the wide open spaces in the big back lot and backstage, Luke almost running into the wall at one point. They're kicked off of the machinery then, and they get a soccer ball from the bus to play around with. This is where Michael would usually bow out, because he still thinks he sucks at sports, but he wants to be with them all today, needs the camaraderie of the four of them to keep him standing up. Ashton keeps trying to rope in passing crew members so they have enough for a proper match, but the sight of four boys running around like chickens with their heads cut off is enough to put off most people. At one point Calum almost hits Michael in the face with the ball and they have a brief shouting match that dissolves into laughter.

They've all been emailed the behind the scenes video for the “She's Kinda Hot” music video so they can see it before it gets put on youtube in a couple weeks, and Michael puts on his headphones and sits against the side of the bus to watch it when he simply cannot do soccer anymore. Ashton had said he thought it was good (he'd watched it as soon as it got emailed out, because he's a keener), and Michael assumes it'll be a nice little distraction, reminder of why the four of them are doing this, reminder of why he's here and not at home avoiding all thought of Calum. He'd forgotten how much dumb shit he'd said while a camera had been aimed at him though. He watches Calum hug him on the screen, watches the stupid, tiny smile crawl up his own face, watches himself ask Calum if he wanted “to make out” and Calum saying, “I'm going to pretend you didn't say that”. And he knows it's a joke, because he was fucking there, and it was just something that sprung to mind when he was looking at Calum, something outrageous to say just because that's what they do, they entertain people, and...and he knows it's a joke, but he doesn't want to be thinking right now about what would've happened if he and Calum were different people with a different past, and a question like that wasn't a joke.

He turns the video off and watches Luke chase Calum around the lot, soccer ball held over his head like a trophy. They're laughing hard enough that Luke's practically wheezing. Ashton has his arms held out like a referee, yelling something about calming down. Michael can see Dave and some of other security hovering a few metres away, looking fondly exasperated with the band's entire existence, and Michael smiles a little bit, ducking his head so no one sees it.

He thumbs open a new tab on safari. He types in “bisexual” and hits the search button before he can talk himself out of it, his breath in his throat like a dishcloth on a washboard, worn-out knuckles pressing down and scraping it clean. He watches the other three run around while the page loads on his phone, unfocusing his eyes until the boys are just a swirling fuzz of colours, distant stars seen through a deep-space telescope. He feels very, very far away from them.

Google loads and the list of blue links stares accusatorily up at him from his phone screen. His fingers hover over the screen.

“Michael!”

He closes the tab. Calum is grinning at him from thirty feet away, his hands tangled up in the bottom of his t-shirt.

“Do you dare me to strip naked right here?” Calum calls.

“Yes,” Michael says.

“No! No stripping!” Ashton cries. “There could be children around!”

“Behind the arena?” Luke says.

“People climbed through air vents to see us, Luke, they could be behind an arena!”

“Zoe!” Calum yells, catching sight of their tour mum trying to walk by without getting sucked into their weirdness. “Do you want me to strip naked?”

She gives him a withering look; the tick of amusement at the corner of her mouth spoils the severity of it a little.

“Seen enough of that for one lifetime,” she says. “Behave, boys.”

“You got told,” Luke giggles as she walks purposefully away.

“You guys are no fun,” Calum says. “Can't a guy let his balls get some fresh air without being lectured around here?”

He's not looking at Michael anymore, and all signs point to Michael no longer being part of the conversation; he's sitting outside of their circle, one ear still covered by his crooked headphones, cast in grey from the shadow of their bus while the other three are soaked in golden sunlight. They're all tilted in towards each other, Luke's body sweetly mirroring Calum's, and Michael desperately wants to be noticed again.

“We could form a human wall around you and shield your naked body,” he yells. “So you could get some fresh air on your balls that way!”

“You see!” Calum says dramatically, pointing both hands at Michael with his palms held up like he's presenting a fancy dish or something. “This is why Mike is the best. He fucking gets me. He cares about my balls.”

Michael laughs and laughs until his chest feels as pinched and small as the palm of his hand.

****

Michael runs over memories in his head during soundcheck, through joking about Luke's flip flops, through playing and singing, through sitting on the edge of the stage like a lineup of dominos and answering questions, through heading backstage again. He's trying to reassert reality. He thinks of the month he and Calum played Mario Kart obsessively until they had double stars on every track. He thinks of when the cereal company discontinued the metal beads and the two of them spent a math class trying to compose a letter to the company asking if they could have the beads they weren't able to collect. He thinks of writing together this year, telling Calum about how twisted he feels sometimes and hearing that Calum gets it, gets him, and then the two of them working to form it all into lyrics with Feldy and other people.

He thinks of the afternoon a couple weeks after Calum's fourteenth birthday, when his mum kicked them out of the house and the two of them walked for miles through Sydney, just talking about everything under the sun that entered into their heads until they came across a fenced in park for an upscale private school and decided to break in.

They climbed over the fence, feeling like the heroes in the games they played, and scrambled over the plastic playground like it was an undiscovered country. They whispered fascinating things about testicles to each other through the weird yellow hollow poles at either side of the yard, and talked about how you could tell the school was rich since they had woodchips instead of pebbles covering the ground.

Calum was determined to successfully run up the biggest slide, a feat Michael had deemed too hard to try. Michael plopped himself at the top and goads Calum as he throws himself against the surface of it, shoes slipping the second they touch the red plastic.

“It's impossible,” Calum grunts on his fifth try. His makeshift necklace of string and a metal bead keeps swinging up and hitting him in the face. He's pouting, his cheeks a hectic red, and Michael's staring again. He's been doing that with Calum a lot lately.

“You can do it,” Michael says, lazily certain.

“You come down here and try it if you think it's so easy,” Calum says.

“I don't think it's easy,” Michael says. “But if you make it up here I can make it worth it for you.”

Calum's eyes gleam; he loves winning things.

“Oh yeah?” he says, grinning a little nervously. “You—you'll—”

“You have to get up here first,” Michael says.

There's a low fizzing hum through his body, like his blood's gone carbonated. The playground is too open for this, but he feels reckless. It's all a game. It's all part of the game, and he just wants Calum to keep laughing.

Calum takes his shoes off. He backs up so far Michael almost thinks he's giving up and going to do something else, and then he sprints full force at the slide. His feet thud up the slope and Michael scrambles backwards to give him space as Calum slips halfway up, gains a last second purchase on the sticky soles of his feet, and lunges for the top, just barely grabbing onto the edge. He's panting, his flailing legs making sharp, girl squeals as they skid over the plastic, and Michael hesitates only a second before he grabs onto one of Calum's hands and helps him up.

Michael topples onto his back and Calum collapses beside him, breathing hard.

“You did it,” Michael says.

“No, I didn't,” Calum whines. “You had to help me.” Out of the corner of his eye Michael can see Calum glancing at him squirrelishly. “Do I—do I still—”

Michael rolls over onto him with a burst of bravery, spidering his fingers up against Calum's sides. Calum erupts into squeaky peals of laughter, squirming underneath him all warm and solid and skinny, and Michael hides his face in Calum's neck, grinning helplessly into his skin. He slides his hands up underneath Calum's shirt and presses them to the flex of his stomach, and Calum shudders, still anticipating tickling.

Michael shifts until his thigh is between Calum's legs and grinds it down against Calum's crotch, feeling Calum jerk. His heart is racing—they've never done it like this, so out in the open, so real in the crisp, bright, plastic-smelling air. He feels like there's a spotlight on them, and he shifts to cover Calum as much as possible, rocking down into him as Calum plumps up against his leg.

“Mike,” Calum gasps, his hands clenching and releasing in Michael's shirt. “Mike, Michael.”

Michael keeps his own hips held away, because that's not part of this. One of Calum's knobbly knees is cutting into Michael's side, and he's still pressing closer.

“Just wrestling,” Michael whispers nonsensically. “We're just wrestling.”

His mouth keeps bumping up against Calum's neck, and he very badly wants to kiss the skin there, leave a mark. This experiment is maybe warping a little, swelling inside Michael's head, and yet somehow he still feels like he knows nothing. Everybody wants to get off and everybody probably falls a little for their best friend, right? That's why they're called “best”.

“Michael, please,” Calum whines, and Michael shoves a hand down into Calum's shorts to—

“Hey.”

The sky splits open—everything tips sideways and the playground disappears and Luke's face eclipses it all, hovering above Michael as he jackknifes into awareness.

“What?” he says, his chest feeling so tight he thinks it's going to explode. He looks around to find that he's in the dressing room backstage, slumped on one of the couches.

“You fell asleep,” Luke says, looking vaguely concerned. “Food's here, if you want.”

“Right,” says Michael. His mouth feels gummy, and he can't believe he'd slipped into sleep without even noticing, transported to a whole other world while still in the fucking dressing room, where anyone could see him. He can feel that he's not hard—thank god—but what if he talked in his sleep or something?

“You okay?” Luke asks, crouching down so he can be at the same level as Michael.

“I'm fine,” Michael snaps. “Why wouldn't I be?”

“It's just—you're sweating a lot,” Luke says. “You didn't have a nightmare, did you?”

“I always sweat a lot,” Michael says. “You always sweat a lot, who are you to talk? You're disgusting.”

Luke eyes him suspiciously.

“I didn't have a nightmare,” Michael says, wondering a little hysterically if he's telling the truth. “Where's Cal and Ash?”

“They went off to bug Casey and Nia and them,” Luke says. “You wanna go find them?”

“No,” Michael says. He likes their opening act a lot, but he can't imagine dealing with the hyperactivity of both of their bands together right now. “Can we just—let's just eat.”

He feels bad for snapping at Luke once his stomach is full and he's calmed down a little bit. Out of all of them, Luke is the one who gets him the most, probably, and Michael doesn't want to complicate another friendship.

“You're my favourite,” he says out of the blue, cuddling up to Luke on the couch.

“That's just 'cause I brought you food,” Luke says.

“It is not,” Michael says.

One of their stylists pops her head in to tell them it's apparently half an hour to the start of Hey Violet's set and that they should come see her for hair stuff soon. Michael nods and flashes a thumbs up, letting Luke do the talking. Michael is tired. He wants to sleep without dreaming for once.

“You'd tell me if something was really wrong, right?” Luke says once they're alone again. He looks awkward—Luke is most comfortable talking about deep things and feelings and stuff at night with the lights off. They've had some of their best bro chats past midnight, huddled together on a hotel bed or in the shadowed lounge of the bus. Michael misses that, wishes he could tell Luke about this weird stuff in his head. He misses knowing who he is with his friends.

He wonders if Calum's told Luke anything about Michael being off or something. Lately, Calum and Luke keep whispering in corners and stuff, quick, short conversations that Michael's pretty sure he's not supposed to have noticed.

Michael shrugs in answer to Luke's question, and before Luke can press further, Zop's there, ushering them along to get ready.

****

Nothing changes in the show. It's electric again, the sound of the crowd like a shot of adrenaline right into his heart. Calum is all over Michael and Michael is all over him right back, crazy, disjointed thoughts in his head, like, “gotta fight fire with fire”, and “the only way out is through”. Calum comes over and props one knee up on one of the speakers at Michael's side of the stage, and Michael sits on his knee, rubbing his ass back when Calum tries to escape the weight of him. It's too loud for Michael to hear Calum's laughter, but he can see it round and wild in the open stretch of his mouth as Michael chases Calum away from his side of the stage, bouncing backwards to wag his butt like a threat. He can feel the phantom jut of Calum's knee into the meat of his ass for the next three songs, and he can't stop dancing around, trying to shake it off.

Calum reads out more signs about Michael and “malum”, and Michael can tell that it's going to be a recurring joke now, his stomach knotted tight as a fist as he laughs and laughs 

In 'Good Girls', Calum sings, “Michael, what does she say?”

And Michael screams back, “Calum's my boyfriend!” 

He tells himself it's the shrieks of the crowd that make it worth it, not Calum's grin. 

**** 

They have a meet and greet after the show for some contest winners from some sort of thing, and Michael throws himself into it. One of the girls gives him a handmade pikachu plushie and Michael rambles about how great it is until she's gone so pink that she is a thousand times cuter than the pikachu. She keeps pressing her hands daintily to her cheeks and Michael wants to bottle her voice for a cartoon character. A cute squirrel, maybe. She looks like she's barely fifteen. Growing up, Michael never really wanted younger siblings, but he has his moments sometimes when he meets people like this. 

Most of the other winners are more taken with the rest of the band (Luke is floundering awkwardly in a small sea of girls), so Michael doesn't feel bad about talking mostly to the pikachu girl, Marie. He asks her if she's excited for their new music, and her face lights up so much it's almost cripplingly good for Michael's ego. She tells him she's really excited with the direction that the music seems to be going in, and then fumblingly explains how her girlfriend, who helped her make the pikachu, is really looking forward to the new album as well. 

“Oh,” says Michael, not able to completely tamp down the surprise in his voice. He's terrified about reacting wrong for a second, knocked off kilter. He feels weirdly exposed. “That's awesome. Did she come with you to the concert?” 

Marie's smile returns, and something loosens in Michael's chest.

“No,” she says. “She lives too far away. You're...you're the first person I've told about her.” She pats at her cheeks again, looking dazed with her own personal victory. “Sorry, is that weird?”

“Of course not,” Michael says. He's shit at this role model thing, but he knows this is something he's gotta do right. “Look, don't let anyone tell you who to be if people are shitty to you or if you're scared to tell people. I mean, your girlfriend's clearly really cool. Look at this pikachu.”

He waggles the pikachu back and forth and Marie laughs—so, so cute, like a baby elf—and hugs him again. Michael holds her and focuses on the warm feeling in his chest rather than the screwed up ball of sick hiding underneath it. He doesn't know how to classify what he's thinking—the threads unravel the second his head tries to throw a rope to connect this situation to his weird dreams, to his thoughts about Calum. Does Marie know something about Michael that he doesn't?

They take group pictures and say goodbye to the fans and then troop back to the bus, comparing presents. The highlight, other than Michael's pikachu, is a caricature of Ashton that someone made and a bag of chocolates and other goodies that Calum shares with the rest of them. There is no going out, because they have to drive through the night again, so they slowly separate and prepare themselves for bed as they tire, the bus rumbling under their feet.

Michael is lying in his bunk with his headphones on, listening to their new album and staring up at the ceiling, trying to remember how he felt recording the lines, how he felt writing them. They'll be letting people who pre-ordered it have “Jet Black Heart” soon, and Michael worries the base of his thumb with his teeth and puts it on repeat, trying to figure out if Marie and her girlfriend would like it. He remembers Calum, shirtless with a guitar on his lap, L.A sun sweating on his golden shoulders, singing along as they came up with it. Convoluted thoughts keep tumbling over and over in his head, sentences starting and breaking off. The song feels like a fatal prediction; all the lines about demons and dreaming and hurricanes is hitting way too close, like his past self was trying to warn him. He's so afraid to go to sleep; what if the next memory that gets changed is a more recent one, from writing and living together? What if he dreams about pulling Calum aside in a writing session to suck him off, or that the two of them slept in the same bed the whole time they lived there?

He scrubs a hand over his face, shivering hot at the thought, and almost jumps out of his skin when the curtain of his bunk gets yanked back.

“Jesus,” Michael says, pulling his earbuds out and staring at Calum—because of course it's Calum. “Knock or something. I could've been jerking off.”

“Whatever,” Calum says. “You always wait to jerk off until you think we're all asleep, same as the rest of us.”

“What do you want?” Michael says, his voice knocked a little crooked by the thought that Calum has heard him jerking off before, even though it's objectively not very surprising.

“Don't be grumpy,” Calum says. “I've got a present for you.”

No fucking way, thinks Michael, and then Calum's pulling out a terribly familiar metal bead. This one's got tiny triangles etched on it, and Michael stares at it, a horrible falling sensation happening in his chest.

“How—?” he says weakly, because this isn't a funny coincidence anymore.

“It's the craziest thing!” Calum says excitedly. He's almost completely in shadow, but Michael can still see the brightness of his eyes shining out. “In the last box of chocolates, there was one chocolate missing, and this guy was sitting in the last spot! I don't remember ever mentioning that we once collected these in an interview or something, so I have no idea how the fan who gave me these knew, but she did, and it's like—it's like I'm supposed to find these, you know?”

He's got his arms braced on the edge of Michael's bunk, the curtain falling against the back of his head and making his hair stick up. He's looking at Michael with this slipping smile on his face, and Michael can't find it in him to school his own expression into something happier.

“What is it?” Calum asks softly.

“Why are you giving them all to me?” Michael blurts. “Why not keep some, why not make bracelets for the other guys?”

Calum looks taken aback, his mouth moving slightly like he's coming up with and rejecting potential answers. 

“I don't know,” he says. “It's—it's a you and me thing. These beads. They're from when we were kids together. It feels important, like...like a reminder that we're friends and I'm here for you and stuff.” He pauses, looking embarrassed. “Do you think it's stupid?”

“No,” says Michael, and any other words get lost halfway up his throat. He turns onto his side, wordlessly offering Calum his wrist. Calum looks at him suspiciously, something hurt stretched along the skyscraper cut of his stiff shoulders.

“Give it to me,” Michael says. “That's the same as the one you took from my room when we were fighting about Christie, so you owe me.”

Calum's smile is back, like a light in the dark bunk, and Michael is a deer in headlights, dazzled stupid by it.

“Look, you were being a dick,” Calum says, carefully untying Michael's bracelet. His fingers keep brushing over Michael's pulse point, soft over the jump of Michael's blood. “It wasn't my fault she liked me instead of you, and I didn't even like her, so you were being really mean to take it out on me. Besides, I gave you this bead in the first place, so I was just taking it back 'cause you were being a bad friend.”

“That's definitely not what happened,” Michael says quietly.

“It is,” Calum says.

“Fuck off,” Michael says. He feels drunk, almost, and the words lose their edges in his mouth, falling out soft and round like peaches. Calum laughs, slides the third bead on and re-ties the shoelace, staring down at his fingers stroking absentmindedly over the fabric.

“You don't have to wear it if you don't want to,” he murmurs. “If I'm like...weirding you out or something with this.”

“Shut up, Calum,” Michael says.

Calum is quiet for a long minute, as if he's taken Michael's words to heart, staring down at their overlapping hands. Michael takes the opportunity to stare at Calum, at what he can see of his face from this angle, his hair falling in front of his eyes and just a sliver of his lips visible beyond his nose. He looks so different from the younger version Michael has been visiting in his dreams, but he's still so clearly the same person that Michael half-expects Calum to look up with that blazing, determined look dream Calum had leveled at Michael before tackling the slide.

Calum doesn't look up though. “How many people do you think still are friends with people they met when they were eight?”

“Not many,” Michael says, though he's not sure Calum needs an answer.

“I thought I would've gotten sick of you long ago,” Calum says. “Or that we'd've grown apart. But we're both still here.”

“Other people aren't us,” Michael says. “We're gonna be banding until we're sixty, right?”

Calum glances up then, and maybe Michael shifted nearer while Calum was bowed over their hands, or maybe Calum did, but suddenly their faces are claustrophobically close. Michael is frozen in place, his field of vision filled with the darkened curve of Calum's cheek and his eyes as round and bright as globes. Michael can't breathe. A heavy, leaden feeling takes over his body, his fingers tingling like the blood flow has been cut-off, and all he can do is look at Calum, feeling like he's standing on the wing of a plane, waiting to be pushed off into open air.

Calum blinks. His eyes flit over Michael's face, and whatever he finds there makes him lurch back just enough to cleanly fracture something in Michael. Michael pulls his hand away, trying to make the movement look natural, panicking like mad inside. He's given something away—told a secret without opening his mouth. He doesn't know what it was, but he knows it was important.

“Yeah,” Calum says shakily, and Michael can't even remember what Calum's agreeing with. “Obviously. I'm—”

“I'm gonna go to sleep,” Michael cuts in, rolling over to put his back to Calum.

“Right,” Calum says, his voice already distant, like he's happy for the excuse to leave. “See you in the morning.”

There's the squealing, shredding noise of the curtain being slid fully back into place, and the bunk fills up again with deep red shadows. Michael runs his hand over the spines of the three beads on his bracelet, creating matching grooves on his palm and his wrist. He listens to the vague sounds of Calum rustling with clothes and climbing into his own bunk, Ashton emerging from the bathroom and having a short, hushed conversation with him about something Michael can't quite hear. He's trying not to think. His chest hurts.

The dreams started after Calum gave him the first bead. He's been wearing the bracelet every time he's had these dreams. And random metal beads from an Australian cereal promotion from years and years ago don't just show up in the middle of another country and find their way to boys who'd collected them when they were kids. These things just don't happen. The universe is playing some sort of sick joke on Michael.

And yet, obviously, that's ridiculous. Beads don't 'cause really gay dreams. He rolls over onto his back and holds his left arm above him, examining the bracelet as if it'll suddenly start spitting smoke and screaming in demon tongues. It just looks like a shoelace and three beads. He can't be sure that there’s a connection if he takes the bracelet off and he doesn't dream anything tonight.

He's had two and a half dreams—the one in the middle of the day barely counts. Three nights though. That would make a pattern. He'll keep it on one more night, just to see.

He's awake for a long time. He stares into the flat black ceiling of his bunk until his entire body feels like it's melted away into his sheets, becoming something thoughtless and guiltless; it's only then that sleep comes.

****

They're lying on their backs beside each other on Michael's bed, shoulders nudged up tight. His mum made spaghetti that night, and Michael is pleasantly full, staring distantly up at the ceiling and enjoying the way the food sitting in him and Calum stretched beside him make him feel warm and loose. They've been talking in little bursts, both too content to sustain a conversation for more than a couple minutes. It's one of the things Michael likes most about Calum—the way they can exist together in silence and Michael doesn't feel like Calum thinks he's boring. Maybe it helps a little bit that Michael's been getting Calum off pretty consistently these last couple of weeks, but Michael doesn't think he's stupid to believe it's just that their friendship is that awesome.

“Janie was talking today,” Calum says out of the blue.

Michael grunts to show that he's listening. He's thinking a little hazily about how he could reach out and slide his hand down around the inside of Calum's thigh if he wanted to, and how Calum would let him, would probably go all soft-limbed and stupid about it. It's a pretty nice thought, and it doesn't stop giving Michael little fizzes of excitement—touching Calum and not being rejected still feels like getting away with something.

When Calum doesn't say anything else, Michael prompts him: “Talking about what?”

Calum flushes and his jaw juts out a little, pre-emptively defensive. “Kissing and stuff.”

Michael stares at the side of his face. A sliver of cold rushes through him, like there's a window open somewhere. “Like, with you?”

“Not like, about kissing me,” Calum says, and Michael tries not to look horribly relieved. “She was talking about Dave and how good he is at kissing. She was like, showing off.”

“Sorry,” Michael says. “I know you like her.”

“It's whatever,” Calum says. He's brought his hands up to rest on his chest, one hand fiddling with a metal bead he grabbed off of Michael's bedside table. He's watching the glint of silver in his fingers like it holds the secrets of the universe, but Michael knows he just doesn't like meeting anyone's eyes when he's feeling nervous. “I mean, I don't, really, anymore. But it's like—”

He cuts himself off and sighs loudly.

“What?” Michael says.

“What if I'm shit at kissing?” Calum mumbles. “I've only had the one, you know, at the start of the year, and it was so awkward she wouldn't talk to me afterwards.”

“You didn't want to talk to her either,” Michael points out.

“Yeah, because it was shit!” Calum says, pushing his shoulder into Michael like he wants to hit him but is too lazy to commit. “I just feel like...like maybe I need to practice, or something.”

Michael goes very still. Calum's cheeks are dark with colour, and his eyelashes are super long up close. He's watching his own hands, but Michael's eyes are drawn directly to Calum's mouth, pursed slightly in nervousness, terribly pink, all smooth skin around like a girl, even though Michael's getting stubble on his own upper lip already.

“You've been helping me practice,” Michael says softly. “It's only fair if you get to like, use me for that too.”

“Not like you know anything about kissing,” Calum says, throwing the bead off somewhere into Michael's bedroom with one savage pump of his arm. “I'm doing you a favour too.”

Michael squirms onto his side on the bed, pushing his face into Calum's shoulder and breathing in deeply.

“You do me lots of favours,” he says, and bites Calum through his shirt, the starchy fabric rough on his tongue.

Calum squeaks and shoves at him weakly, and Michael grabs his shoulders, pressing him down hard against the bed. Michael knows Calum could beat him in a fight if it came to it, but he's gotten good at reading this side of Calum—a lot of the time, he pushes just because he wants to give someone a reason to push him right back. Calum gets this hot, intent look on his face when Michael goes along with it, and it's sort of the best thing Michael's seen so far, makes him feel bigger than his body, better than fourteen years old and fumbling like a kid. 

He'd kind of thought this thing with them wasn't going to have kissing involved, because that feels like it's crossing some sort of weird line from stuff you do with your friend to stuff you'd do with a girlfriend, but he knows better than to mention that. Calum is below him, trembling slightly, like a skittish dog about to bolt, and Michael lays a hand carefully on his side, propped up awkwardly over him on one arm.

Calum swallows visibly. “Are you gonna—”

“Yeah,” says Michael quickly. “Yeah, I'm, I'm—”

The words get softened out into candy floss in his mouth; he's leaning in closer, and Calum is eclipsing everything, with those maddening eyelashes fanned against his cheeks and the slick inside edge of his bottom lip peeking out because he's gone all soft-mouthed and anticipatory. Michael is definitely only a kid, completely lost, and he kisses Calum anyway

He keeps his mouth closed, and he has no idea what to do with it once it's resting there, warm against Calum's mouth. In a burst of panic, he slides his hand down Calum's side to grab at his ass as if answers are going to be there. Calum jolts against him, his lips parting on a surprised huff of air and skidding strange over Michael's lips. For a split second, it's good, and then the bubble of fear in Michael's chest is bursting into nervous laughter, and he's pulling back.

“That was—” Calum starts, and Michael squeezes his fingers into the meat of Calum's ass and swoops down to tap another kiss on his mouth. He misses, sort of, and it gets smeared over the side of Calum's chin, but he decides to play it like he meant to do that.

“That was just the first one,” Michael says. “It'll get better.”

“I was gonna say that was pretty okay,” Calum says, shifting in Michael's grip to press more of his ass into the cup of Michael's hand. “But better sounds good.”

“Shut up,” Michael says. His chest feels like it's glowing, and he can't let Calum see that, so he leans in for another kiss.

Time falls away. Michael doesn't know how long it is before they really get the hang of it, but when they do...when they do, it's delirious. Calum's mouth is world-endingly hot and open and eager under Michael's, and Michael keeps forgetting how to breathe, keeps forgetting that that's even something he needs to do, that there's anything in the world besides the clumsy stab of Calum's tongue against his own. He pulls away to gasp like he's dying, and then he's moving back in to kiss Calum harder, forging forward until his jaw aches and his mouth feels fleshy and numb. Kissing is unbelievably wet, and Michael doesn't know anything—god, this is his very first time kissing someone—but he thinks Calum is really, really good at it.

Heat is shuddering in pulsing waves through Michael's body, so much more visceral than any other time simply because he's lost control and flattened himself to Calum so that they're touching from head to toe. His dick is snug up against Calum's, both of them hard, and Michael wants to move more than anything, rut against him, but this is more than he's ever let himself have, and he's frozen in place in fear that Calum's going to throw him off, his whole body tensing and untensing with the shivering urge to grind down.

“Fuck,” Calum hisses, muggy and small against Michael's cheek. His hips tick up into Michael's pleadingly, and there's no way, no way he doesn't feel Michael's cock.

“Can I—” Michael whispers, and Calum moans out “yes,” and fists a hand in the back of Michael's shirt.

They have to be quiet—Michael's mom is just downstairs, doing the dishes. Michael finds out quickly that rocking forward too hard makes the bed scrape a little across the floor, bumping slightly into the wall, and after a long, frozen moment of waiting to hear if anyone comes upstairs to investigate, they both figure out how to move slower. They rub together with one of Calum's legs pushed up so Michael can get a better angle, work their dicks together harder. They could take off their clothes, but they would have to stop kissing to do that, and Michael is pretty sure he's gonna die the second he doesn't have Calum's mouth on his.

He's going to come. It's surging in him like a tidal wave approaching the shore, and he's ecstatic with it, grinding in tight and vicious right where Calum likes it just to make him whine against Michael's mouth. Michael's never come with another person there before—somehow, this is sex more than the handjobs or blowjobs were. This is Calum pushing up into Michael's thrusts and scrabbling at his back, kissing him like he wants Michael to come.

“Calum,” Michael says vaguely. “Cal, you're so, you—”

“Yeah?” Calum gasps. “I'm—I'm what? Mikey, I'm—”

It's hearing his name in Calum's strung out, aching voice that does it. Michael bites down on Calum's bottom lip and comes hard, his dick pumping out huge wads of come into his boxers, shooting again and again. He's crying out, muffled against Calum's mouth, and then the pressure of Calum's body against him is flickering and disappearing—Michael's clothes on his skin are changing to sheets, and he's jamming his hand down over his twitching cock, squeezing out the rest of his orgasm alone in his bunk.

“Jesus,” he breathes. “Holy shit.”

His eyes are wet at the corners and the inside of his boxers are a mess. He lies there in the darkness for a minute, trying half-heartedly to gauge what time it is by the quality of the faint light in his bunk, before he has enough strength in his body to reach for the box of tissues he keeps in the top corner of his bunk for 'emergencies'. He checks his phone as he mops himself up, and he's about ten minutes early for Zop's morning wakeup call.

So that's that then. He tosses the messy tissue in the corner of his bunk, telling himself he'll deal with it later, and goes about wrestling his cursed bracelet off of his wrist. When he successfully gets it off, he turns it over and over in his hands, not even sure what he's looking for. Three times is a pattern though, and patterns can't be ignored.

He leaves the bracelet in his bunk when they head out to face the day.

****

He makes it to midday, halfway through filming some sort of behind the scenes thing for the tour, before Calum notices that he's not wearing it.

“Where's your bracelet?” he asks. He's got a weird, shattered look on his face. The camera's just gone off them, the crew preparing to shoot a segment interviewing John, their front of house man.

“Oh,” says Michael, fiddling with the stack of bracelets on his wrist. He'd been hoping Calum wouldn't look close enough to notice. The other two are right there, looking at them. “Oh, I—”

“He's wearing like a whole store's worth,” Ashton says. “Calum, what are you talking about.”

“What ARE you talking about,” Michael repeats in a stupid voice. It makes Ashton laugh, which is always nice, but it's not sufficient distraction.

“Are you talking about the new one I saw you wearing yesterday?” Luke says. “The like, shoelace with beads? I was gonna ask you about that.”

“I guess I forgot it in my bunk,” Michael says. Calum blinks.

“Well,” he says loudly. “So much for friendship.”

“What, did you make him the bracelet?” Ashton asks.

“It's not—” says Michael.

“Yeah,” says Calum. “But clearly Michael hates it, and me. You guys are my only friends now.” He collapses dramatically into Luke's arms, hiding his face in Luke's neck.

“Are we?” Luke says. “Because you haven't made me a bracelet.”

“Obviously Calum was trying to woo Michael,” Ashton says. “With his super awesome jewelry making skills.”

“I am not trying to woo Michael,” Calum says, pushing out of Luke's arms to swat at Ashton. Ashton dodges, giggling. “Shut up.”

Michael feels stiff and awkward watching them joke around. Luke is looking at him instead of the other two, and he doesn't know what to do with his face.

“It's a friendship bracelet,” he blurts. “He's not trying to woo me. That's stupid.”

Calum trips, falling halfway into Ashton's chest. Ashton catches him automatically and tips him back up onto his feet. Calum is breathing hard.

“Yeah,” he says. “Friendship. Only Luke gets my friendship now though, 'cause you're a dick.”

“Me?” Ashton says. “Well, fine. Me and Mike will stick together. We don't need you guys.”

“We'll split into two bands,” Michael says. Luke is still staring at him, and it's unnerving. “Mine and Ashton's will obviously be better, 'cause we won't have to deal with Luke's farting all the time.”

“We'll see about that,” says Luke, and the way he says it is so funny that the whole conversation gets derailed by the three of them repeating Luke in the stupidest ways they can, ending with Michael practically screeching it.

Michael gets Dave to come back to the bus with him so he can grab the bracelet before the show, and Calum lights up giddily when he sees Michael's got it on again.

“I really did just forget it,” Michael lies, and he keeps it on even when Ashton starts the whole “wooing” thing up again.

Michael's wrist had felt cold and weird without it, honestly, even with the pounds of other bracelets.

They play the show and they go fucking nuts, and that night Michael takes the bracelet off before he goes to sleep.

He wakes up without having dreamed at all, and the relief in his chest is so heavy that it's crushing, painful.

As a solution it's very much a band-aid on a fucking stab wound in his kidney; figuring out how to stop the dreams doesn't answer why the bracelet caused them in the first place, or why he can't stop thinking about them, or why he feels stupidly self-conscious around any guys his age outside of Luke and Ashton, constantly second-guessing what he says to them, what he thinks about them. Robbie's number stays in his pocket, and he stops joking around with Casey from Hey Violet so much, overthinking it all. They all call Casey “cute”, partly because he is, and partly because they all swore they wouldn't bring any shit to the girls of the group by even jokingly hitting on them, not wanting people to imply that Hey Violet slept their way anywhere, but now Michael feels weird about it all. It's always in the back of his head—the only two times it isn't is during shows, when the music makes sense of his life, and when he's asleep.

Sleeping is still fraught. He always remembers to take the bracelet off before he climbs into bed each night, but that doesn't mean the dreams are gone completely; Michael can nap anywhere, a skill he only got more practice in when they started touring and had to deal with jet lag on top of busy schedules, and sometimes he forgets what's around his wrist and he lets himself drop off in the back of vans, or in the dressing room, or on the hotel bed in the middle of watching Pokémon with Ashton and security.

He gets snatches of the storyline happening in cursed bracelet land, glimpses of Calum's round, smiling face and his skinny legs sprawled across Michael's bed. Since the kissing started, dream Calum has been pushier, more active, sneaking in kisses when they're alone in the boys bathroom, or walking home from school, making out up against fences and walls. The timeline moves fast—sometimes it's only days that have passed between each little scene Michael lives, but sometimes it's weeks. Calum's like a tiny siren waiting behind Michael's closed eyes, and dream Michael is deliriously happy, floating around in a fog of endorphins, driven wild. It wrecks havoc with Michael's own moods. Some days he'll drift off feeling grumpy and wake up too overflowing with warmth to push the feeling away, false as he knows it is, but other days he'll be fine before he sleeps and pissed off when he comes out of it, angry that he has so little control over his own head. He thinks about pretending he's lost the bracelet, just chucking it away or even burning it to make sure it's gone, but he thinks of Calum's face and he can't do it. It's not Calum's fault that any of this is happening.

Calum brings him new beads almost every other day, wildly excited. Michael holds out his wrist and lets Calum fiddle with the bracelet every time, watching the look on his face with a suicidal curiosity, unable to ignore how much it looks like dream Calum's expression the first time Michael pushed him into the art supply closet at school and kissed him breathless. Each new bead makes the dreams more vivid, more real, and if the other two are anywhere near, they always make some loud, obnoxious comment about Calum “wooing” Michael. Michael's wrist slowly gets covered in metal and Calum's stories about where he found the most recent bead get more and more weird.

“It was sitting in the candy dish in Hey Violet's dressing room!”

“Okay, but when I walked out on the balcony in my room, it literally fell from the sky and landed on the banister. I'm not fucking kidding, it almost fell off, but I saved it.”

“Michael, this one was actually in the lining of my underwear in my bag and I sure as hell know I didn't put it there.”

Calum thinks it's magical and awesome, and Michael can't take that away from him, so he lets himself feel excited and happy when Calum comes over to tie on a new bead, and then subtly avoids being alone with Calum otherwise. It's depressingly easy; they're so busy that there's almost always other people around, and Michael can use the busyness of tour life as an excuse for the days when he feels particularly off. Since he and Calum are still lighting it up onstage, Calum doesn't get that the “off-ness” is related to him.

It's fucked up; Michael is two people at once, and both of them feel real. One is glowing brighter with every dream, and the other is starting to feel burnt out. They travel and they meet people and pose for pictures and sign things and sit on small couches to do interviews and they do show after show after show. Ashton yells out to the audience that this is their safe space, and Michael takes that to heart and lets himself go. Calum points out signs to Michael and dances around him onstage and buoys him up till he feels crazy with it, terrified because he can't tell the difference between how dream Michael feels when he's looking at his Calum, and how Michael himself feels when Calum's burning bright in a show in front of him.

“Michael, what does she say?”

“Malum is real!”

****

The days bleed into each other and Michael's dreams bleed into everything.

They're in a radio station somewhere, sat around a table with headphones on and mics mounted on long spider leg attachments shoved into their faces. It's been a good day so far, with nothing but travel scheduled after this interview, and Luke is cuddled in close to share a mic with Michael, warm and comforting against his side.

“—and we really just want our fans and stuff to feel like they've got like, that we're on their side,” Ashton is saying earnestly. “That's sort of the idea of 'the new broken scene' that we're bringing in with the new album.”

“It's for anyone who's felt out of place,” Michael puts in. “Misfits and stuff, 'cause we can relate to that.”

“People who are going through tough times, like, with mental health or being confused about stuff,” Ashton says. “Growing up and other people being assholes and—”

“Sexuality,” Calum says abruptly, and Michael tries not to freeze like he's being personally called out. “And like other confusions, or whatever.”

“Yeah,” Luke says, nodding supportively at Calum.

Calum's face is blank—Michael can't get a read on him the way he normally can, probably because Calum doesn't mean anything in particular by it. There's a half-composed text to Halsey that's been sitting in Michael's phone for the past three days that just says, “how did you know”, and Michael presses down hard on the bulky shape of his phone in the pocket of his jeans as if it's going to start screaming out his secrets.

“Do you explore personal experiences with that stuff in the songs?” the interviewer asks, and he doesn't seem to be pouncing specifically on the sexuality thing, so Michael lets himself relax a little bit. He dozed in the van on the way here and had a dream just short enough that it was only him and Calum having a stupid conversation in gym class, giggling and pressing their knees together. He's feeling too loose today to be angsty.

The interview flows on, and the guy asks a mix of decent music-related questions and stupid shit that lets Michael riff off topic. It's the best interview he can remember for a while, and somewhere around the time that Ashton laughingly reveals a prank they pulled where they printed out like a thousand pictures of Luke's butt and pasted them all over Hey Violet's dressing room, Michael starts feeling like things are taking a turn for the better.

“You guys have obviously known each other for ages now, but you've done hundreds of interviews,” the guy says. “Do you still have embarrassing stories to tell about each other that no one's heard yet?”

“These guys never stop doing embarrassing things,” Luke quips. “So yeah, definitely.”

“Luke almost fell into the Grand Canyon while naked,” Ashton throws out.

“I did not!” Luke says squeakily.

“You did,” Ashton says, at the same time as Calum protesting that, “everyone knows that story though, is that really one no one's heard?”

“Hey!” Michael says, leaning forward into the mic. “I've got one—when me and Calum were kids, he played soccer all the time, and I didn't really like soccer, but he roped me into helping him practice sometimes. And once when his parents were gone and I was over, he decided to practice naked, but like, naked goaltending.”

Luke's already starting to laugh beside him, and Michael is grinning as he continues. “And it was all fine until I kicked the ball at him really hard and hit him like, right in the junk. And he screamed—”

“When was this?” Calum cuts in.

“—and his neighbour, who was this little old lady, poked her head over the fence and saw this naked kid and started screaming too—”

“Even I haven't heard this!” Ashton exclaims in delight.

“'Cause it totally didn't happen!” Calum says defensively. Michael looks over with a shit-eating grin on his face, because obviously Calum's just embarrassed, but Calum has a strange expression on his face, more confusion than mortification. “Dude, I do not remember this.”

“Come on!” Michael says. “How could you not? She screamed and we freaked out and ran inside and were super worried she was going to call your mum and you were going to get grounded and—”

and I pushed you up against the fridge and went to my knees, Michael thinks. Sucked you off with your whole body shivering away from the cold door and into my mouth, and calmed you down that way.

He stops talking abruptly, his smile suddenly feeling like paper on his face, stiff and fragile. Everyone is looking at him expectantly. Calum is staring, one eyebrow arched, and his face falls more and more the longer Michael is silent, like stories of a building slowly crumbling. Michael doesn't know what his own face looks like anymore, what he's showing everyone. He ducks his head and tries not to do something completely insane, like throw up everywhere, or scream, or burst into tears. The worlds in his head are colliding with huge, disastrous explosions.

“Calum's clearly just making excuses,” Ashton says, darting in towards his and Calum's mic. Michael sags back against Luke, and fixes his eyes on Ashton, instead of Calum, who is still looking at him like he's trying to find the fault lines in his chest. “I have no doubt that he did something like that. I could tell you way more times when Calum was unnecessarily naked, but I won't because this band really needs to get back some of its dignity.”

“This band has never had dignity,” Luke says.

Michael stays quiet for the rest of the interview, tucked into Luke's side like Luke is his mum or something. He misses his mum, but right now, she's just one more person he couldn't possibly explain this stuff to. “Hey, mum, how are you doing, I've been going nuts and confusing dreams with reality!” That would go over great.

They finish the interview and are wrapping things up, saying goodbyes and thank you's, and Michael feels like he's going to vibrate apart

“I'm heading to the bus,” he grunts to no one in particular, the second it's not incredibly rude to leave, and takes off by himself.

The bus is empty. His breathing is too loud, great gasping gulps of air that are too big for his body. He's going to burst open. He staggers up the steps into the bus and sags against the wooden frame for the bunks, absolutely destroyed just by the sight of Calum's rumpled sheets.

Michael punches the side of the top bunk once, as hard as he can, and his fist explodes in pain, fingers going numb.

“Fuck,” he says, tears springing reflexively to his eyes. “Fuck!”

He shakes his hand out, kicks Calum's bunk sharp enough to jar his ankle. A hurricane is swirling ugly and huge inside of him, and the energy of it makes him shake, makes him want to tear something apart. He gets his fists snarled in the sheets on his own bunk and he rips them off, sinking his fingers into the mattress like he can gouge right through it and dig out the heart of everything he's fucked up. The bracelet on his wrist digs in, and he pulls it off with fumbling fingers, chucking it into his bunk so hard it hits the wall with a dull smacking sound. His hand hurts like hell, and he's tipping sideways, cramped on his knees in the tiny aisle between the bunks.

“Michael?”

It's Calum's voice, and Michael tenses up for a second before he's scrambling to his feet. His head swirls from standing up too fast, and he has to blink a few times before the silhouette of Calum at the top of the bus stairs comes into view. He's looking wide-eyed from Michael to the crumpled, pathetic mess of sheets on the floor, and Michael feels suddenly like a child pitching a fit.

“I was,” he says, clearing his throat, “I was looking for something.”

“Mike,” Calum says, and he's moving closer, which Michael really can't take right now.

“Don't,” he says.

“Are you okay?” Calum asks softly, in a way that says he knows Michael isn't.

“I just,” Michael says. He shoves a hand up the side of his face to push at the corners of his eyes, tug the skin away. “I just, sometimes I feel like I'm going fucking crazy, I—”

“Hey, hey,” Calum says, crowding in close before Michael can say anything else. His hands are hovering over Michael's arms, and Michael's skin feels like it's crying out for the contact, desperate for it. “You're not crazy, okay—if this is 'cause I said that one thing didn't happen, it's probably just that I've got a shit memory. I know it's been a long fucking tour, Mikey, but you've got us, we're—”

“It's not about the fucking tour,” Michael says. “It's me, okay, and you're always touching me, and it would be better for you, if you just—just stayed away from me.”

Calum jolts backwards, one stumbling step.

“What,” he says flatly, the edge of the word trembling a little. Michael's cold, peeled open and exposed.

“I—I didn't—it's nothing,” Michael says frantically. “I didn't mean that, I'm just off today, sorry.”

There's voices outside and footsteps on the stairs, and Michael grabs his ruined sheets and shoves them into his bunk, crawling in after them.

“I'm having a nap, so leave me alone!” he yells out to the bus as a whole, and then wrestles his phone and headphones out of his pocket so he doesn't have to listen to Calum's low, worried voice muttering to Luke, probably about how Michael is clearly going off the rails and obviously in love with him.

****

Michael does actually take a nap, safe with the bracelet off, and he feels slightly better when he wakes up. More numb, at least. Calum won't really look at him, which is fine, because Michael's absolutely avoiding him. The other two notice the tension, and it makes things awkward. They cart their stuff up into their hotel for the night—Michael taking the time to very carefully place the bracelet in his bedside table—but none of them are very tired. Michael wants very badly to get drunk, so when someone tentatively throws out the idea of going out to find a club in the city they've just arrived in, he agrees right away.

They go out.

Zop sends the whole security team with them and vets the place they're heading to to make sure it's got a VIP lounge so they won't get super mobbed or anything. All Michael cares about is that it's loud and dark inside, coloured lights whirling around and people writhing away on a dancefloor, anonymous in the shifting spotlights.

Three beers in and halfway through some sort of pink mixed drink Luke had bought him as a joke, and Michael is feeling better than he has in weeks. Everything is pleasantly hazy around the edges, and Luke is an even better pillow when he's drunk. Alcohol is a convenient softener of tension; things are finally feeling normal again.

“What is this called?” he asks Luke, scooting his drink back and forth on the table. “This, this thing you got me.”

“I don't remember,” Luke says, squinting at it. “Didn't I tell you what it was called a minute ago?”

“Michael is a lightweight!” Ashton crows from the other side of the table, which doesn't even make sense, because Michael's pretty sure the amount he's had doesn't count as “light”.

“Yeah, well, you're...stupid,” Michael says. Everything's gone quiet and elemental in his head. He can't hold onto a thought for more than a minute, and it's exactly how he wants to feel.

“Is anyone else hungry?” Calum asks. “I'm fucking hungry.”

“Nachos!” Michael says, slapping at the table. Luke is very comfortable. “Luke, you're like a cloud.”

“I am?” Luke says slowly. Ashton cackles, curling in on himself.

“No, not nachos,” Calum says. “What's that Chinese food I really like?”

“Pad thai?” Ashton says.

“Yes!” Calum exclaims, pointing victoriously at Ashton.

“That's not Chinese,” Luke says. “That's Thai food. That's why it's called pad thai.”

“I don't think they have Chinese or Thai food here,” Michael says.

“I don't wanna eat anymore,” Calum says decisively. “I wanna dance. Guys, come dance with me.”

“Yes!” Ashton yells. “Let's do this.”

Calum starts shoving Ashton off the bench so he can get out, and Michael clings to Luke. “Stay here,” he mumbles.

“Guys?” Ashton says, looking down at them questioningly.

“Come on, Luke,” Calum whines. “Mikey?”

He's been ignoring Michael since Michael freaked at him earlier, but he seems to have forgotten about it now that he's drunk, and Michael's drunk enough too that that's a good thing. Calum's eyes are so bright. Michael wants to reach up and poke them, see if they feel hard, like marbles.

“No,” Michael says. “Luke's my pillow, he's never leaving me.”

“I have no choice, apparently,” Luke says.

“You guys suck,” Ashton says.

He and Calum melt into the crowd, Calum flipping them the bird with both hands, and Michael snuggles more into Luke.

“You should buy me another one of those drinks,” he says.

“Buy your own,” Luke shoots back. He sounds distracted, and Michael figures there's probably some sort of attractive girl giving him the eye.

Michael does end up getting his second drink by being obnoxious and asking Mack, one of their security guys, if he could please grab Michael another. He professes his undying love when it's brought to his hands, and Mack rolls his eyes and steps just out of earshot again, surveying the club like it's a warzone. Things get fizzy in Michael's brain, everything moving a little bit faster than his head can keep up with. His hands feel larger than usual, and he keeps forgetting one of them is bruised until he accidentally whacks it again on the underside of the table.

He and Luke have a long, liquid conversation about music and tentacle porn and the finer points of Australia vs. America. Chunks of time keep dissolving out of the timeline of the night that Michael's got in his head—they leave the table to stand by the wall and he doesn't know when that happened. He's staring out at the dance floor when he realizes he doesn't know where Calum and Ashton are, and he cuts Luke off in the middle of a rant about confusing coffee sizes to ask after them.

“I don't know,” Luke says. “We could go look for them, if you want.”

“Yes,” Michael says. “Let's do that.”

They tell Dave they're headed to the dance floor, and then Michael's got his hand around Luke's wrist, trying to follow him without tripping on the wavering black floor. The lights are fucking with his head, with his depth perception, and he almost falls three times before they get to the safe crush of bodies, the sheer volume of them helping to keep Michael upright.

He loses his grip on Luke at some point, but he's not worried, because there's a girl suddenly there, blinking up at him from under long, spiky eyelashes, biting at a lip stud and putting her hands on his hips. She's got blue hair, and she looks a little like Halsey—wasn't there something Michael had to ask her, something he wanted to say? He can't remember, but this girl is dancing, and he's dancing with her. He's clumsy and stupid, but it's making her laugh, so it's all good.

Drinking always makes him want to fuck. He gets weak for contact and desperate for something or someone on his mouth when he's buzzed, can't stop licking and scraping his own teeth across his bottom lip the way he wants to across someone else's. She's maybe up for it, if Michael could get over the thickness of his tongue enough to do a half decent job of communicating how much he's up for it, but for now they're just half-heartedly grinding.

He closes his eyes when she presses in close to shout her name, and—

“What?” he says, heart squeezing in his chest.

“Cal,” she repeats. “Well, Callie.”

“Cool, right,” he yells, though it is neither of those things. “I gotta—”

He stumbles away through the crowd, shouldering his way in-between packs of people, searching for a sign of Luke, or Ashton, or security, not even sure why he needs to get away, only knowing that he has to. Faces loom out of the dark and flash by him. He doesn't know if he's heading back towards the table or if he's sinking deeper into the crowd. The music pulses against his skull, steady beat outstripping his heart, and he lurches forward.

He trips over someone's foot and is definitely about to overbalance and go crashing to the ground when a hand tucks around his waist and tugs him around—the whole room goes spinning with him, spinning in a slur of colours and landscapes like a globe, coming to a shuddering stop only when Calum's face rears out of the black.

“Mikey, come dance,” Calum says, the faint glint of a smile on his face. “Been looking for you.”

Michael falls into him. It's inevitable.

Calum leads him over to the edge of the dancefloor, by the back wall, and it's darker over there, muggier. There's a cold breeze though, like someone's opened a back door to try and air the place out a bit, and Michael is shivering, pressing into Calum's touch. Calum moves slowly against him, silly churns of his hips like the kind Michael usually makes fun of him for. Michael's throat is dry. He needs another drink, but Calum will have to do.

“You look good,” he says thickly, because it's true. Calum's gotten all sweaty under the lights, and it's like a glaze on his skin, making him look like...like art, or something to be licked. There are curls of hair stuck to his forehead, and Michael wants to test the texture with his thumb, see how easily it skates on his skin.

“I always look good,” Calum says smarmily, pulling a stupid face.

Michael laughs, because he's supposed to, and steps closer. “I can't dance,” he says. Calum's still moving to the music, and Michael feels stupid just standing there.

“I know,” Calum says. “I've seen you try. You really, really suck at it.”

“Fuck you,” Michael says.

“It's like this,” Calum says, and then his hands are where Callie's were, long fingers firm around the side of Michael's hips. “You're a musician, you should be able to feel the beat.”

Michael wants to make a joke about other things he could be feeling, but he's transfixed by a passing spotlight flickering over the side of Calum's face, sharp on his cheekbone, making him strange and beautiful in the following darkness. They fall into a rhythm together, Michael moving under the pressure of Calum's hands, the waistband of Calum's jeans brushing against his. The bass is so loud that Michael can feel it like a shudder through his body, a hook just below his navel, pulling him in to press into the spaces Calum leaves every time he moves.

“Like this,” Calum repeats, soft against Michael's ear, and the music is so loud that Michael feels it more than hears it. The back of his throat hurts, sharp, like he's going to cry or like there's something spiky working its way out onto his tongue. The only solid thing in the world is Calum against him, and he's clinging, stuck on the feel of Calum's cheek brushing his.

There's a muted alarm blaring in the back of his head. This is dangerous, it says. This isn't safe, this isn't safe. The world tips slightly, or maybe Calum does, and their foreheads meet, Calum's pressing sideways in a tacky slide over Michael's hairline, all the way over to sear across the dotted skin where he was burned a month and a half ago. Everything flares—heat like a bomb through his body, and Michael is pitching backwards, knocked off axis.

“Whoa,” Calum says, laughing slightly. His arms are still outstretched, and when he steps forward to try and steady Michael, Michael shies away.

He can't see Calum's face anymore—the spotlights have left.

“I've gotta—” Michael starts. “I can't—”

Calum's hands fall to his sides.

“Sorry,” he says, which doesn't make any sense at all. “I didn't mean to—”

“I can't dance,” Michael says.

He fights his way through the crowd back to the table, his hands shaking. He's drunk too much, and suddenly he needs to be gone. He half expects Calum to have followed him, but when he steps up out of the dancefloor and looks back, he can pick out Calum's head sticking out of the crowd. He doesn't look like he's moving, frozen as one solid point in the middle of a storm.

Luke's at Michael's side suddenly, gazing past him to where Calum is.

“Hey,” Michael says. “Where did you come from?”

“Aw, shit,” Luke breathes, ignoring him. “I gotta—” He breaks off and steps down into the crowd, moving through the people towards Calum.

Michael makes himself turn away, and pitches off towards the stairs leading up to the balconies.

****

Half an hour later, he finds his way back downstairs, his mouth stinging, and his heart pounding. Ashton is sitting at the table, talking to security and a couple members of crew that apparently decided to come out as well in their own group.

“Ash,” Michael says. Ashton looks up, his face lit up, and something dims when he sees Michael.

“You okay?” Ashton asks.

“I wanna go back now,” Michael says. “You should—you should head back too. We could go back together.”

Ashton's standing, his hands on Michael's shoulder, and Michael's not sure when that happened. His brain keeps blinking—what if more happened when he was dancing with Calum and he can't remember now? What if he forgets what he just did?

He might want to forget that though.

“Yeah, okay, Mike,” Ashton says. “Let's just tell Dave, and Mack can get us back.”

“Thanks,” Michael says. “Love you, Ash.”

“Love you too, man,” Ashton says. “Let's get you out of here.”

****

Michael sobers up a little on the drive back, Ashton passing him water bottles that security seems to pull out of nowhere. He's a little irritated by how fine Ashton seems to be—Michael hadn't had that much more than him. He leans heavily on Ashton on the elevator up in the hotel, and convinces him to let Michael bunk with him for the night.

“I want cuddles,” Michael whines.

“God, you're so needy,” Ashton says. “Come on then.”

They tumble into Ashton's room and sprawl out on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

“Are you at least a little bit drunk?” Michael asks.

“Yeah,” Ashton says slowly. “Bryana was texting me.”

It seems like a strange segue, but Ashton is weird about his almost-girlfriend. He'll tell Michael out of the blue that he thinks he might love her, but he's said he's still single in a few interviews. He talks about image a lot, and all Michael can think is that if he was Bryana, he'd just want to know for sure.

“You like her a lot,” Michael says.

“Yeah,” Ashton breathes. “I think we might like—do this for real. Like properly.”

“That's awesome,” Michael says.

“Yeah,” Ashton says.

“What does that feel like?” Michael asks. “When you really...you know...”

“What do you mean?” Ashton says. “Haven't you—”

Michael shrugs, his arm bumping up against Ashton's on the sheets. He leaves it there; Ashton's skin is warm.

“I don't know,” Michael says. “I just—how can you be sure?”

“Sure that what? That you like them at all?”

“That it's real,” Michael says quietly. “What does it feel like when it's real?”

Ashton's quiet for a long time. Michael imagines he can hear the gears turning in his skull.

“I can't describe that,” Ashton says. “It's different, I think, for each person.”

“You're no help,” Michael says.

“Is there someone you're—”

“No.” He responds too fast; he can feel it when Ashton turns to look at him, but he determinedly stares at the mottled pattern of the ceiling stucco until Ashton relaxes again.

“Okay,” Ashton says. “You seem sad, Mikey. Come here. Come into Muma Ashton's arms.”

He gropes for Michael's side and Michael giggles and swats him away.

“I think I can see a face,” Michael says, pointing up and clumsily drawing with his finger in the air. “In the ceiling stuff.”

“Shit,” Ashton laughs. “I see it too. It's a demon from another world, here to kill us.”

“From a parallel universe,” Michael says.

“Big words for someone who couldn't pronounce the drinks on the menu earlier.”

“Some of those were in, like, German!” Michael protests, shoving at Ashton, and Ashton dissolves into giggles, batting weakly at Michael in response.

They settle. Lying down makes everything swirl a whole lot less, but the ceiling is still shuddering occasionally, like a screen door in a breeze.

“Do you think parallel universes exist?” Michael asks.

“They could,” Ashton says thoughtfully. He does love a good psychological discussion when he's a little drunk. “I mean, we'd have no way of knowing if they did or not, but like, they could be out there.”

“Out there,” Michael repeats, waving his arm dramatically.

“People say that that's like, why we get deja vu or something, 'cause we're like, glimpsing other universes,” Ashton says.

“Really?” Michael says.

“Maybe. I might have gotten that mixed up with something else.”

“Do you think—” Michael has to stop for a second, just to swallow. His throat is dry. He wishes distantly that he was still drinking. “Do you think we could see into them sometimes?”

“Like, in dreams or something?”

Michael jams a hand over his face to hide his crazed grin, mashing at his cheek with the heel of his hand.

“Yeah.”

“Well,” says Ashton. “Maybe. That might be an explanation for recurring dreams or something. They could be moments that mean a lot in the other world.”

“Deep,” Michael says faux-seriously, and Ashton flicks him in the side.

The more the buzz wears off, the more anxious Michael feels. He curls up into Ashton, clinging like a koala.

“Ash?” he whispers at length.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think there could be a parallel universe where I'm not—I'm not me? Where like, I do stuff I wouldn't, or feel stuff I wouldn't?”

“I think...” Ashton pauses, and Michael tries not to die in the gulf between his words. “I don't think so. It's still gotta be you, right? So if there's a parallel universe where you're feeling and doing other stuff you've never considered, then it's probably something that does live in you and you just don't really know about it.”

He shrugs, and Michael presses his cheek into Ashton's shirt until it feels like it could swallow him up. Ashton shifts to tuck an arm around Michael's shoulders, and something swells hot and choked in his throat.

“I'm good,” he mumbles. “I'm fine.”

“Course you are,” Ashton says. “Is any of this to do with Calum?”

“Why would it have to do with him?” Michael asks.

“Dunno,” Ashton says. “You guys have been being weird lately. Both of you.”

Michael shrugs. “It maybe has a little bit to do with him,” he admits.

Ashton doesn't say anything at first, and for a moment Michael thinks that maybe he's fallen asleep and didn't hear that.

“You know you can tell me anything, right?” Ashton says at length.

“Yeah,” Michael says, but he doesn't.

They lie there long enough that Michael falls asleep, and he wakes to a disorienting clatter of voices.

“Michael,” someone says, shaking his shoulder. “Mike, hey.”

“He's sleeping, Luke, leave him alone,” says someone else—Ashton, Michael realizes as he surfaces.

“What?” Michael says blearily. He rolls over, out of the cradle of Ashton's body, and two shadowy figures pitch into view, hovering beside the bed.

“Michael!” Calum says, shoving in front of Luke to knee his way up onto the bed, insinuating his arm under Ashton's to cup Michael's shoulder. “I missed you!”

He smells like he's inhaled an entire bar, and his eyes are glassy and brilliant. Michael can almost see himself reflected there, a tiny, distorted head and shoulders.

“He cried when he couldn't find you,” Luke says. He sounds weird.

“I did not!” Calum says, but the effect of it is weakened slightly by the way he's pawing at Michael's body.

“You guys didn't say you were leaving,” Luke says.

“I texted you!” Ashton says.

Luke digs his phone out of his pocket and checks. “Huh. You did.”

Calum's pulling at Michael's arms now, tugging him insistently up and off the bed. Michael's sea-legs fail him, and he topples into Calum the second he's standing again, resulting in a strange, awkward hug.

“You can't have him,” Calum's saying nonsensically. “This is my Mikey.”

“I—what?” Ashton sputters. “I'm not trying to—he's my friend too!”

“I'm your Mikerowave,” Michael giggles, remembering a stupid keek from ages ago.

Calum gets it instantly and clutches him harder, repeating it at top volume: “This is MY Mikerowave!”

“You guys are fucking weird,” Ashton says. “Get out of my room—I wanna sleep.”

“Michael needs to sleep,” Calum says. “That's why'm—I'm rescuing him.”

Michael closes his eyes and leans against Calum, letting the noise of the other three fade in a murmur of faint sound, like a radio heard through a car window. Calum is not a mountain, solid as he feels, and when he finally moves, Michael lets himself be carried along, his feet moving only enough to keep himself upright and propped against Calum. Light changes through his eyelids—goes bright and then dark again with the clunking sound of a door opening.

Calum's saying his name, and Michael luxuriates in the sound of it in his voice for a second before he allows the urging to open his eyes.

“Michael,” Calum's saying. “Are you asleep? You've fallen asleep on me, haven't you.”

“No, I haven't,” Michael slurs. His face is pressed into Calum's neck, eyelashes smashed back so he can feel them like spider legs on his eyelid when he blinks. It's weird.

He doesn't realize they're back in his own room until Calum pushes him off and he flops down onto his bed among a tangle of computer cords he'd left there earlier in the day. He doesn't even remember Calum fishing his key card out of his pocket, which means he probably did fall asleep for a moment in the hallway. The ideas of “sleeping” and “Calum” make his stomach go all twisted.

“Shove over,” Calum says. “Give me some room.”

“No,” Michael says firmly. “My bed.”

Calum pushes at his side, and Michael closes his eyes again, trying to become as heavy as possible so he can't be shifted. The alarm in his head is telling him that “bed” and “Calum” isn't a good combination either.

Calum gives up quickly, stopping with one hand sunk into the mattress beside Michael's head, close enough that the hair on Michael's neck feels like it's reaching for him, close enough for a vague line of heat to radiate there, making the rest of Michael's body feel horribly cold.

“That was a good night out,” Calum says softly. The sound of his voice is much closer than Michael had expected, and he fights the urge to open his eyes, not wanting to know how close.

Michael hums in response.

“After—after you left,” Calum says. “There was this girl. That I was like, dancing with.”

“Yeah?” Michael says. His tongue feels like it's coated in chalk.

“She was really hot,” Calum breathes. “Like, her tits were...fucking huge, bro.”

Michael hums again.

“And we were—and we were dancing. You know? Like how me and you were, except, she was—she was really into me. Told me she'd be down for whatever.”

Michael's gut keeps going tense, shivering, and he can't tell if it's because of what he drank, or because of the heat shocking through him. Calum is hovering above, so close, and Michael can feel it all along his body. His brain keeps throwing up jagged questions, breaking off right at the part that matters, so he doesn't even know what it is he's waiting for. Is Calum gonna—is he—

“But I didn't do anything,” Calum says. His voice is small. He sounds like he's confessing a crime, or trying to describe something he's only seen once in a dream. “I could've—she was—she was so—but I didn't.”

The heat of him disappears and then reforms all at once, condensed a breath away from Michael's face. Michael feels like he's falling into a tailspin, plummeting at high speed away from the soft plateau of sheets beneath him; Calum sets his teeth to Michael's shoulder and everything in him comes slamming back at the shock of it. His eyes fly open. The side of Calum's neck is all he can see—Calum is braced above him, and there's a dull semi-circle of pressure being bitten into Michael's shoulder through his shirt. His hair is soft against Michael's cheek and Michael is gasping soundlessly like a fish on the beach.

It's only a second before Calum's pulling back, still too close for Michael to see his face.

“It's all so weird, Mikey,” he says.

He's straightening up, and Michael can't get his limbs to work, can't seem to lift them off the bed to grab Calum, make him stay.

“Come back here,” he says.

“It's so weird,” Calum repeats, and then he's footsteps leading away, and then he's nothing.

Michael lies there for a long time, staring at the inside of his eyelids and waiting for sleep to come. There's a swollen balloon of words in his throat, and he can barely breathe around it. He's abruptly desperately lonely, and before he knows what he's doing he's fumbling for the night stand, smashing his bruised hand on the drawer before he manages to get it open enough to reach in and pull out the bracelet. It takes him three long minutes to get it tied on his wrist, biting one end and struggling with shaking fingers at the other.

There's a Calum somewhere who won't leave him, and Michael knows how to find him.

****

They fuck for the first time in Michael's bed a week after he turns fifteen.

Michael had been thinking about it for ages, pulling and squeezing at Calum's ass whenever they made out, watching a ridiculous amount of porn when he was at his own house, and slowly working up to fucking himself with three fingers in his ass during one hazy jerk off session that lasted all afternoon.   He's passed a lot of gay milestones with Calum's help, and he'd be lying if he said he still doesn't know if he really is bi or not. He's about 95% certain he is. 100% certain whenever Calum has his tongue in his mouth. But there's one gay milestone that he's pretty sure will seal the deal.

He's thought the most about what fucking Calum would be like, the tight grip of his ass, whether Calum would like it, if he would make those cut-off sounds he does when Michael holds him down and sucks him off. But he's not stupid, and he's worried that might be a bit too gay for Calum. He's about 80% sure that Calum is also some type of gay, considering how many months they've been doing this shit together, but Calum's never actually said anything like that, and the last thing he wants to do is scare Calum off and bring an end to this. Doing this stuff with Calum is sort of the best thing in his life, and he doesn't know what he'd do if Calum wanted to stop.

So he buys the stuff they need (skipping class so he can grab it at a time when no one who knows him might accidentally see), invites Calum over when he knows his parents are gonna be out the whole night, and brings it up in the middle of making out.

“You should fuck me.”

He has a whole argument prepared on why it won't be weird—it's like practice for Calum fucking girls, lots of girls like getting fucked in the ass so it's not a specifically gay thing, Michael can be quiet if Calum wants to pretend it's someone else—but he doesn't need any of it. He brings it up, and Calum chokes out, “oh my god,” against his shoulder and comes hard, twitching his hips down against Michael's thigh.

“Sorry, sorry,” he pants, as soon as he gets his breath back. “I can go again, I swear, I just—fuck, Michael.”

“That was a yes?” Michael asks, just to make sure. He hopes Calum can last longer than that when he gets inside him. Jesus, Calum is going to be inside him. 

“Yes,” Calum says. “Obviously.”

They take their clothes off as fast as they can, arms colliding as they try to strip themselves and each other at the same time. Michael tries very hard to ignore how self-conscious he feels when he's fully naked, and focus instead on how Calum looks wearing absolutely nothing but a necklace with a silver bead. Calum's always been comfortable with nudity in a way that Michael isn't, but Michael's never seen him naked quite like this, sitting back on his heels on Michael's bed right before he's going to fuck him, his pink cock resting against his thigh, half-hard again already. The way he's looking down at Michael, like he's knocked a little off-balance by the sight of him too, makes Michael feel powerful again, and his voice doesn't shake when he asks Calum to hand him the lube.  

Calum strokes himself fully hard again while Michael gets ready, Calum staring open-mouthed at Michael's fingers pushing awkwardly into his ass. They fumble with the condoms and lube, Calum's hands shaking hard enough that he can't even get the condom on when it's out of the package. Michael rolls it on and gets him all slick. They kiss for a while just like that, both kneeling awkwardly on the bed, until Michael's fear has gone down enough for him to pull away. He gets on his hands and knees—'cause there's no way he can actually meet Calum's eyes while they do this—and says he's good whenever Calum is.

It doesn't hurt so much as feel really fucking weird when Calum first presses in. Calum feels a lot bigger than Michael knows he is, and it's like his body's going into shock to try and adjust, everything clenching shivery and tense. Calum has one hand on Michael's hip and the other at the top of his ass, just above where he's feeding his dick in, and he keeps swearing in this low, surprised voice that's somehow unlike anything Michael's heard from him before. He waits when he's bottomed out, holding tremblingly still as Michael squeezes his ass around him.

“I'm good,” Michael says hoarsely when he doesn't feel like he's going to pass out anymore. “You can, you—”

Calum starts to fuck him then, and Michael loses whatever it was he was going to say.

It's a sweaty, uncomfortable blur, and it's the best feeling Michael's ever had. He can't touch his dick because he's too afraid he's gonna shoot off as soon as he does. It's not that Calum's a master at sex or anything, because he only manages to rub over Michael's prostate once every few thrusts, and it's not that the feeling of being full up with cock is just so all-consumingly good—it's that it's Calum. His head is exploding with the reality of it, the fact that it's Calum's cock shoving into him, Calum crying out behind him, Calum curling down and kissing the sweat off of Michael's shoulders. It feels like they've been heading here ever since Michael met him, ever since Calum saw him spinning a metal bead on his desk and struck up a conversation. Michael is about to burst open with the feeling of it all inside him, little pieces of it knocked out of him in stupid noises every time Calum's prick jams in deeper.

It's over pretty quickly; Calum comes first, and then Michael. Calum's barely done gasping and rutting against Michael's ass when he slides his hand down from Michael's hip to fumble awkwardly at Michael's cock hanging between his legs. It's the first time he's ever touched Michael like that, and it barely takes two unsteady strokes before Michael's coming hard, white noise blaring in his ears and his whole body clamping down on Calum's softening cock still in his ass.

“Jesus,” Calum's whispering when Michael gets his hearing back. He's flattened all the way along Michael's back, collapsed there like he can't keep himself up. “Jesus, Mikey, god, love you so much—”

Michael's arms slide out from under him and they go crashing to the bed in a sticky pile, Calum's cock slipping out of Michael's ass—which stings really, really weirdly. Michael wrestles Calum over so Michael can see his face, because Calum can't have said what Michael just heard, except Calum's staring right at him and repeating it:

“Love you, Mikey, love you.”

Michael kisses him—can't not. He's exhausted and buzzing and he feels like he's glowing somewhere, like it's shining out of him.

“Do you?” asks Calum shakily, and Michael's laughing when he answers, “yes, god, yes, I—”

****

There's white ceiling stucco above him. He's alone in his hotel room.

“No,” he says. “No, no, give it back, take me back, please, no—”

He sounds crazy. He feels it.

He jams his mouth against the bracelet, curling up on the bed around the shriveled sensation in his stomach. He cries stupidly until Zop comes to wake them up.

****

Last night, after Michael left Calum on the dance floor, he had gone upstairs where people were hanging out on the balconies in the hopes of finding someone who would share some weed with him. He didn't find that, but he did find a short guy with black hair that he could back into a quiet corner and kiss for ten, twenty minutes, until he realized what he was doing and ran away like an idiot.

Michael doesn't remember this detail until halfway through the day, and he wishes he hadn't. It was his first actual kiss with a guy, and it feels wrong. Dream him had it right—his first kiss with a guy should've been with Calum. His first anything with a guy should've been with Calum. It's like his whole life is wrong, like he's the alternate universe, and the other one is reality. If he was gonna be bi, it should've been like in the dreams. That's how it should've happened.

They have one of their stupidly busy days again, and Michael isn't left alone with Calum until they're in the dressing room backstage before the show. As soon as there's a moment where everyone else has left the room, Calum gets up from his chair, where's he's been studiously examining his phone, and plops down next to Michael on the couch.

“Hey,” he says.

Michael grunts in response and doesn't look away from his phone. He can't really look at Calum without remembering the feel of him around and inside, and wondering how that would feel now that they're both fully grown, so he's decided to just not really look at Calum all that much today.

Calum sighs. “Michael.”

“What?” Michael says.

“I just wanted to say sorry,” Calum says quietly. “If I was weird last night. I was just drunk and stuff.”

Michael remembers Calum's mouth on his shoulder. Remembers dream Calum's dick rubbing carefully over Michael's hole before pushing in. He shivers.

“Whatever,” Michael says.

“But, like, we're friends,” Calum says. “Best friends. So we can work through this. You can't just tell me to stay away from you. You gotta tell me if I'm like—like, we work together, so we gotta be on good terms. We can still be friends, right?”

It sounds like a break-up line, and Michael feels a strange, hysterical bubble of laughter get stuck in the middle of his throat, choking him.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know we're friends.”

Calum is silent for a long time. When Michael chances a glance at him, he's staring down at his lap, his hair curling gently over the bent nape of his neck.

“Can I have the bracelet back,” Calum says.

“No,” Michael says immediately, panicking. “What? You gave it to me, it's mine.”

“Well, maybe I want it back,” Calum says.

“No take-backs,” Michael says. “We said that before. It's mine.”

“So you get to ignore me just because of—but I can't have back stuff that I found?” Calum says. “That's not fair, Michael."

“I don't care,” Michael says, wrapping his right hand around the bracelet protectively, trapping it to his wrist. His chest feels like it's shrunk in size. “It's mine.”

“You're a fucking child,” Calum snarls. He stands up, the loss of his weight making the whole couch shift like a body of water. He storms out of the room, leaving Michael alone and vaguely confused. 

Ashton comes in by himself about five minutes later. Michael leans on him when Ashton sits down on the couch, and refuses to answer any questions about Calum.

“Whatever is up with you guys, you gotta fix it,” Ashton says quietly. “Even if you won't let me help. I don't like seeing you guys like this.”

Me neither, Michael thinks.

During the show, Michael tries to ignore Calum. Calum seems to take it as a challenge, because he's up in Michael's space twice as much as usual, his eyes gleaming like it's all a funny joke, or like he's purposefully being an annoying dick. Michael can't show how irritated he is, because they're being projected on huge ass screens and he doesn't want to affect the vibe of the show. He grins and ducks away as much as he can, swooping over to chill by Luke and use him as some sort of safety net between him and Calum.

Calum goes out of his way to point out “Malum” signs in the audience again, reading them out loud and staring Michael down. Michael laughs the first couple times, like he's supposed to, but he can't do it the third or the fourth. There's a poisonous spill of anger starting to trickle through him; it's easy enough for Calum to joke about this shit, because it's not real to him, and won't ever be real. He doesn't have to deal with actually being gay as fuck for someone who won't ever feel it back outside of dreams.

Michael saunters up to Luke in a later song and pretends to grind up on his leg, pressing himself close so he can get his mouth up to his ear. He takes a vicious satisfaction in the swell of screaming in the crowd.

“Can you please keep Calum the fuck away from me?” he says.

Luke scrunches up his face in disapproval. 'Michael,' he mouths.

'Please,' Michael mouths back, because he's going to throw his guitar if he doesn't get some space from Calum.

Luke gives Michael a weird look, but he does as he's asked, because he's the best; when Calum starts heading Michael's way, Luke lunges to block him whenever he can, being distracting and stupid in the way only Luke really can. Calum seems thrilled by this at first. They get through three quarters of the show before he seems to realize what's going on.

Luke's stuck in the middle of singing, and there's no way to keep Calum back; he charges the length of the stage, his fingers not even hesitating on the strings of his bass, and gets up in Michael's face.

“Seriously?” he yells, just loud enough to make it over the noise of the music around them. “You want to avoid me so bad you're recruiting Luke as a shield? We're supposed to be fucking friends.”

Michael shakes his head. He can't pull up a mask, not now that he's being confronted properly. “Leave it, Calum.”

Calum tips his head to the side, like a confused puppy. Something ugly twists up through the tense cords of his neck into his face; he lunges forward faster than Michael can keep track of and sinks his teeth into Michael's shoulder right where he'd bit him the night before. Michael's hand skids across the strings of his guitar, a hideous screech joining the increasing pitch of the audience. The back of his knuckles crash into Calum's.

It's only a second before Michael pushes him away. Calum goes with his teeth bared, not in a grin so much as a snarl. Michael catches Luke's eye over Calum's shoulder, and Luke is staring, with this look on his face like he gets what's going on here way more than Michael wants him to. Michael slams his fingers back on the frets and back into the song. He throws a laugh in Calum's face—see, audience, we're good, we're fine—and ducks back towards his mic to sink into the chorus.

When they get to “Good Girls”, Calum sings the lead-in to Michael's little improv with his whole body tilted expectantly towards Michael.

“Michael, what does she say?”

Michael opens his mouth and it's like a key turns in his head, locking his voice in his throat. He's lightheaded, trapped in Calum's gaze half a stage and too many worlds away. They've been ramping it up each concert, this weird prank of theirs, and there's nowhere left for Michael to go with it except for something that would be way too true. And he can't—he can't say that as a joke.

It rings through his mind anyway: I'm in love with Calum Hood, I'm in love with Calum Hood, I love— 

Luke swoops in and saves it, screaming, “Burgers!” into his microphone. Michael staggers back from the mic and lets the shape of Luke shift to block Calum from his line of vision. Through the glare of the lights, Michael can see some girls in the front looking worriedly in Michael's direction, and he makes sure to grin widely at them in between singing—he doesn't want anyone going home worried or tweeting guesses about his mental state. Especially since he doesn't know what the fuck that is right now.

He keeps remembering more details about the boy he'd kissed last night. The way the corner of his mouth curled up in a pleased way when Michael gave in and crowded him up against the wall. What his throat looked like when he tilted his head up for Michael's mouth. The bite of his fingers on the back of Michael's neck. The memory is fighting with the dream-images of him and Calum stretched out on Michael's bed, kissing and rubbing off against each other. One of them seems unreal, and it's not the dream. The dream is how it should've happened.

Michael is thin and weak under the lights, his temple burning with old pain. The cheers blow through him like he's smoke.

He wants to go back to sleep.

****

“Michael!”

Calum is chasing after him through the backstage halls, and Michael wishes he was in better shape so he could get the fuck away from him.

“Michael, wait up!”

There's a hand on Michael's shoulder, and Michael shakes it off so violently that he almost falls over. He sways, off-balance, and Calum tips into his vision, his arm outstretched, his face crumpled like a wet paper bag.

“Look, fine, so you don't want to talk to me,” he says. “But I need to tell you—are your burns hurting?”

“What?” Michael snaps, and then realizes he's rubbing at his temple, scrubbing at spots that don't even stand out against his skin anymore. “No, I'm fine. I just wanna be alone. I'm going back to the bus.”

“I found another bead,” Calum says urgently. “Well, I didn't, because it's like it found me. One minute my hand was empty and then it was there, and I think we're meant to—”

“It's my bracelet,” Michael says. “And if you've got another bead, you can keep it. I don't want more.”

“Michael,” Calum starts, but Michael is already turning and heading blindly off down the hall.

He glances back once, just before he turns the corner, but Calum isn't looking at him anymore. He's staring down at his hands, cupped very carefully, like he's holding an egg. Or a heart.

****

Michael stares at the bracelet on his wrist for a very long time before he falls asleep, trying to convince himself that he's going to take it off. He doesn't, because he's stupid.

****

They're sitting on the far side of the sports equipment shed, under the cover of a few small trees. Michael is supposed to be in Science, and Calum's supposed to be in English, but it's more important to be hiding here with each other, holding hands carefully between them. There's a gym class playing soccer on the other side of the shed, and Calum tenses up each time a voice gets a little too close. He settles easily enough when Michael squeezes his hand, and eventually he tips over to lean his head against Michael's shoulder and snuggle in. Michael's got his other hand in his pocket, absently tracing over a wrapped stick of gum and what feels like one of his metal beads. It's pretty damn peaceful.

“Did you know this would happen?” Calum asks softly.

“What?” says Michael.

Calum taps his fingers along the back of Michael's hand. “This.”

“I didn't do anything to try and trick you into gayness or whatever,” Michael says, feeling a little insulted. “What, do you think I purposefully was trying to...stockholm you or whatever?”

“No,” Calum says. “I didn't mean it like that. Did you honestly think I just started doing gay shit with you because I was being nice? I'd thought about it before too, I just wasn't brave enough to come out and say it like you did.”

“Oh,” Michael says. He'd suspected, but he hadn't wanted to ask earlier on in case Calum got spooked and shut down everything. 

“I just meant,” Calum says haltingly, “do you think you knew somewhere that this was always gonna...that we were meant to...”

He shrugs, awkward against Michael's shoulder. Michael turns his face into Calum's hair, closing his eyes and breathing in.

“Maybe,” he says. “Didn't know if I was just hoping or what."

“Or what,” Calum says. His voice is so cute. Michael wants to bowl him over and bury his face in Calum's neck, make him squeal.

“I had this weird thought for a couple of weeks at the start of this school year that you had a crush on Hemmings,” Calum says, and Michael pulls his head away in surprise.

“What?” he squawks. “I don't even like Hemmings!”

He doesn't add that part of why he doesn't like him is because the Luke kid seems to like Calum, and Luke looks so much cooler than Michael in a lot of ways and...Michael's maybe a bit threatened by him. Just a bit. Hemmings is probably a douche though; guys that look cool and attractive and stuff usually are. Calum is the exception.

“You're always staring at him though,” Calum says, turning their clasped hands over and over. “And like, I knew you were doing stuff with me, but I was worried that since I was just practice, you were going to drop me for him.”

“That's stupid,” Michael says. “You're the one who keeps talking to him.”

“He's cool,” Calum says. “And I had to get to know the enemy. You know he likes Good Charlotte? He's seen them live. And he plays guitar and sings and stuff.”

“I'm going to start thinking you've got a crush on Hemmings,” Michael says.

Calum shoves him, then reels him back in with his grip on Michael's hand. “I do not. Here—I'll stop talking to him. He's always hanging out with those older guys, so he's probably too cool for us anyway.”

“Fuck him,” Michael says, secretly thrilled.

“I'd rather fuck you,” Calum says, leering. There's a scream, and the thudding sound of a soccer ball hitting the other side of the shed and bouncing off. Calum doesn't flinch away, and Michael kisses him quickly, feeling like a triumphant thief.

“Maybe it's my turn next,” he whispers, and Calum shivers against him, swallowing visibly.

“Shut up,” he says, giggling. “We're in school. You can't wind me up where we can't even do anything about it.”

“You like it,” Michael says. He lifts their joined hands and bites one of Calum's fingers, for no reason other than that he can.

“Who knows why,” Calum says. He's smiling, smiling so bright and big, his whole skinny body tilted into Michael's side, and it feels like every fucked up thing Michael's ever felt about himself just can't exist when Calum's looking at him like that.

“It's 'cause I'm so ruggedly handsome,” Michael says.

“Right, right. Yeah, that's it.”

This is all I'll ever need, Michael thinks, sinking against Calum. Calum feels so soft, like a pillow, or a mattress, and he's everything, every—

****

Michael opens his eyes with a vague sense of confusion. Something is wrong. Something about the dream, something that he was just thinking. Something is wrong.

He goes through the first few hours of the day in a fog of confusion, but thankfully it's another busy day that lets him and Calum mutually avoid each other without issue. The dream is stuffing up Michael's head like a hangover—in a different way than all the others—and he can't get past it. Michael keeps the bracelet on, and can't stop fiddling with it, running his fingers over the bumps of the beads as if it's braille and he can read an answer in it. He slumps against Luke and watches Calum and Ashton talk to Zop. He sits in makeup and lets their makeup lady powder his face and watches the other three run around like idiots. He cuddles into Ashton's side during an interview and listens to him talk about music. He sits in the van on the drive to the next radio station and stares out the window with his headphones in, their new album playing on repeat, until finally he figures out what it was that off in the dream.

Calum isn't all Michael needs.

In the dream, Calum had said he'd stop talking to Luke, but if he did that, neither of them would've eventually become friends with him. And if they'd never become friends with Luke, they wouldn't be here right now. They probably would never have met Ash. They wouldn't be making music Michael loves. They wouldn't be performing to all these people.

At first he thinks it was some kind of mistake, that because he didn't let Calum give him the new bead the other day, the bracelet got confused, showed him the wrong thing. But even he knows he's reaching. The truth is just that the dreams aren't the better universe. They aren't how it was supposed to happen.

For better or for worse, this is where he's supposed to be, but he can't go back to thinking of the dreams as a glimpse into some other weird Michael that isn't connected to him. Not after waking up alone and wanting to go back. Not after standing onstage and realizing how very far he's fallen.

It feels like a switch has been flipped in his head. He excuses himself from a pre-interview conversation with the radio station's crew to go to the bathroom and stare blankly at the wall, his heart racing, until a guy comes in and asks if he's okay.

“Yeah,” Michael says. It's a young guy, one of the interns at the station, maybe only a couple years older than Michael, and he's cute. He's no Calum, but he's attractive, someone Michael could be attracted to, and it doesn't feel as horrible as it did yesterday to admit that in his head. “Yeah, man, I'm good. Thanks.”

When the guy leaves, Michael braces his hands on the sink counter, and looks carefully at himself in the mirror. He rubs a hand over his left temple.

“I'm bisexual,” he says quietly. Then, a little louder, “I'm bisexual.”

It's not as terrifying to say it out loud as he would've thought. Michael smiles shakily, quickly double checks to make sure no one else was hiding in one of the stalls, and then hurries out to get back to the others in time for the interview.

It goes alright. They get asked about Michael getting fire to the face for about the umpteenth time, and Michael rattles off his favourite story of him actually saving Luke's beautiful face from a fireball.

“But it must have been scary for the rest of you, right?” the interviewer says, turning her gaze away from Michael. “Seeing your bandmate go through that.”

“It was,” Calum says abruptly. It's the first thing he's said all interview, and everyone stares at him a little. Calum is staring at Michael though, both of them on opposite ends of the desk, Luke and Ashton squashed between them as awkward buffers. “It was probably one of the worst moments of my life. Michael's really important to me—to like, the whole band—and it was really awful that he had to go through that.”

“Awwww,” the interviewer says, pressing her hand to her chest. Michael looks down at the desk, ignoring Luke when he gives Michael an obnoxious little elbow to the ribs. Sometimes it feels like all of them are conspiring against him.

“You must love him lots, right?” the interviewer continues.

“Yeah,” Calum says, and Michael glances up to see that Calum's finally looked away, fiddling with something he's got hanging from a chain around his neck.

Ashton starts taking the piss out of Calum, and somehow smoothly shifts the tone and topic of the conversation back onto safer grounds.

Michael hasn't really thought about the night he got burned in a while, but he thinks about it in the van on the way back to the venue. He doesn't think about the pain or the shock or the belated humiliation; he thinks about the way Calum hugged him after Michael was all bandaged and safe. In terms of being freaked out, Calum was probably the worst of the other three, at least on the outside—Luke had a tendency to go blank when he was feeling the most, and Ashton always took it upon himself to be the responsible one and stay sort of calm in crises. Calum though—Calum wore it all on his face. He'd looked really, really scared. Michael can almost feel Calum's arms around him now, squeezing tourniquet tight.

Calum and Michael have known each other long enough that when they fight, it's like brothers. They get pissed as hell and then they slingshot right back to each other. And even though Michael's turned that metaphor all incestuous with his stupid feelings, he can't keep punishing Calum for not feeling it back.

He goes up to Calum just before soundcheck and collapses on him in a hug. Calum grunts under his weight, but hugs back automatically.

“Sorry I've been being weird,” Michael mumbles.

“S'okay,” Calum says. “You're always weird.”

“It wasn't about anything you did,” Michael says.

“I thought—” Calum starts.

“I've been figuring out some stuff,” Michael says. Calum goes tense so briefly Michael might've imagined it, and then melts into Michael, warm all along him.

“What kind of stuff?” Calum asks quietly.

Michael shrugs. “Dunno.” Calum feels so good against him, and Michael doesn't want to let go.

“If you don't know, does that mean you haven't figured it out?”

“You're a smart ass and I hate you,” Michael says.

“I know,” Calum says. He pats clumsily at Michael's hair. “I know.”

They're silent for a moment, clinging together. There's a lump in Michael's throat; he's missed his best friend, the real one. Just thinking that sentence in his head makes him hold Calum tighter, swallowing hard around the sudden urge to cry. Whatever's on the end of Calum's necklace is digging into his collar, but he doesn't even care.

“It's these dreams I've been having,” he says, all in a rush. “I just haven't been sleeping well recently and it's been fucking me up. Sorry.”

“Dreams?” Calum says faintly.

“It's stupid,” Michael says.

“What are they about?”

Michael tucks his face into Calum's neck. “It doesn't matter. Stuff I didn't know I wanted. And they just feel—really, really real. But I'm here now. I'm figuring it out.”

Calum hums into Michael's hair, and Michael tries not to feel too much. They stand there, holding each other, until Zop calls them to get onstage for soundcheck.

They walk over to the stage, side by side, shoulders knocking together. Calum's hands are drawn up into fists, and the back of his knuckles keep brushing against the bracelet on Michael's wrist; tick, tick, tick, like a swaying pendulum on a grandfather clock. Michael doesn't move his hand away.

****

Michael loves performing. He loves being onstage in front of the crowd and playing their music. Sure, he has his bad nights, when he's just dead tired, or he sprains his ankle, or he gets his face set on fire, but it's where he really comes alive. This is what he's good at. Probably the only thing, really.

When Calum comes up to try and dance up on him, Michael dances right back, and watches Calum's face light up. When Luke gravitates towards him, goofy grin hiding concern, Michael makes faces at him until Luke is laughing for real. When Ashton says “Michael's chipper tonight!” as they pause between songs, Michael says, “Yup!” in as 'chipper' a voice as he can, and listens to the other three laugh.

“I'm exactly where I want to be,” Michael says. “With you fabulous people!” He throws his hands up towards the crowd, and they scream back in answer, completely in sync.

“And me, obviously,” Calum says.

“And Calum,” Michael agrees.

Calum meets his eyes across the stage and raises an eyebrow, as if to say, 'really?' Michael waggles his own in response. He feels a little invincible, his feet firmly planted in the right universe.

The show is different that night. Calum's different. 

Calum tests it more and more as the show goes on. He walks up close and hesitates a metre away until Michael turns his body out and invites him over to the mic to sing into it with Michael. He bobs up near Michael, but doesn't smile properly until Michael reaches out and strokes a hand through his hair. He pushes and Michael pushes back, and it's not long before they're circling closer and closer, trading spots as sun and planet in orbits around each other. They split to sing in their respective mics, and to suck Luke into their fun, but mostly it's the two of them dancing and spinning and shredding it up together. Michael's body just wants to be near Calum's, and bizarrely enough, on stage in front of thousands of people seems like the safest place, where every true thing he does is hidden under the umbrella of performance.

The acid burn of nausea threatens in the back of Michael's throat a few times, leftover surges of fear and confusion searing there, but he beats it back with the glow of Calum's presence. He shoves all of the anger and sadness into one song only, screaming “I'm wrapped around your motherfucking finger” into the dark roll of the crowd and letting them scream back. The rest of the time, he's good. Before all this mess, Calum could always cheer Michael up, even when he felt horrible, just by being Calum, and Michael's ballooned up with happiness at being able to find that feeling again. The bracelet is bumping up against the neck of his guitar in a constant reminder of all the strange places he holds in his head, but he's here, with this Calum, in this time and space, and he's not going anywhere.

There's a fire coming off the two of them, and before Michael knows it the show is almost over, and they're between songs and Ashton's loudly saying something about Michael and Calum and

“—all the sexual tension.”

A little shock goes through Michael at the words, but he can handle it—they've made jokes like this seven billion times, so actual gay feelings shouldn't change anything. There's sweat turning Michael's vision into a crazy blur, but somehow Calum is perfectly clear all the way over on the other side of the stage, grinning like mad. They start talking at the same time, voices overlapping.

“It feels like a—” Calum starts.

“It feels,” Michael says, and Calum goes silent. “It feels kinda sexual.”

Calum's eyes are burning past Luke's cheek and lighting up Michael's whole body. Michael kind of wishes he would stop, because he's not lying—it feels like hands moving over his skin, like breath on his thighs, like...like something kinda sexual. Michael keeps rocking forward on his toes and rocking back, swaying as if into a kiss. He wants to move.

“Fucking admit it,” Calum says, his words all rushed together. “The connection.”

Michael points at Luke, hovering in the middle of the stage.

“But he's in between it,” Michael says. He's making lists in the back of his mind, things he'd give up if only it would mean this wasn't a joke; dying his hair; greasy foods; his sight, his legs, his ability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat. The silver beads are blazing bright around his outstretched arm, shining in the stage lights.

“So wait, Luke, give us a minute,” Calum says, “so we can figure this out.”

Luke glances quickly over at Michael, a funny little smile hovering in the corner of his mouth. “Okay,” he says mildly, and steps away from his mic so that there's an open line of sight across the stage, nothing but one mic stand and empty air in between Michael and Calum. 

“Do you mind if we—” Michael starts, not even sure where his sentence is going. Calum's already talking over him, his smile making his whole face wild.

“Is there feelings?” Calum asks, and Michael freezes, staring at him. “Is there feelings right now?”

It sounds like just part of the bit, but Calum's watching him, and behind his easy, laughing expression is an intentness that Michael can't quite read. Calum's hand is tight around the mic stand, the clench of each individual knuckle standing out even all the way across the stage. Michael can't look away from Calum, and even though he's got a grin still pasted on his own face, he's terrified that it's all obvious anyway—the fear and the love. The real answer almost claws its way out of his throat before he manages to morph it into some sort of ridiculous whale noise, an “ehhhh” sort of wishy washy sound that is definitely leaning more towards a yes than a no. He wants to ask Calum what the fuck he means, if he actually wants a real answer.

Ashton saves them.

“That would just make it awkward on the tour bus and I don't want that,” he says sternly, and Michael's able to snort and look away from Calum, his heart slamming against his ribs.

Distantly he hears Calum say,  “yeah, we'll stop, we'll stop this”, but when he glances back up, Calum's is still staring, and it doesn't seem like stopping is anywhere on his mind.

Luke says something to the crowd and they roar, everything sliding back on track like nothing happened at all, like Calum isn't giving Michael a look that says he'd be doing way more than that if they were alone. Michael's glad he's got his guitar in front of his crotch, because he's chubbing up just a little over it, heat shuddering through him like lightning currents. Is it just the glow of stage lights making everything seem brighter and hotter? Is he making this all up in his head?

As soon as he starts moving, Calum does too. Michael runs across the stage, meeting Calum in the middle behind Luke. Michael lets his guitar hang free from its strap and takes Calum's face in between his hands, swaying in to yell, “What was that?”

The crowd is screaming, screaming, screaming. Michael doesn't know if he and Calum are being blown up on the big screen right now, if thousands of people are filming to scrutinize his mouth later and figure out what he's saying. He doesn't care if they are—Calum is staring at him from a foot away, sweaty skin sticky under Michael's hands, his eyes glittering.

“Tell me what you dreamed about,” Calum shouts.

Michael drops his hands and staggers back a step. “What?”

Ashton says something about the next song they're playing, and Michael takes the excuse to run away to his own mic, snapping back into concert mode. The beads on his wrist feel like they're burning his skin. Michael's head is a scrambled junkyard, and Calum wants to know what he's been dreaming about.

They only have a couple more songs, and then it's time to say a temporary goodbye. Michael's the first one offstage after the main set, hands feeling numb. He needs to catch his breath before the encore; he peels his shirt off of his chest and fans it, trying to get some air over his drenched skin. Michael closes his eyes and listens to the roar of the audience, the pure animal thrill of it. It feels like it's scraping him clean.

He hears footsteps, and then Luke is circling around him to grab water bottles, giving Michael a weak high five as he pass. A second later, someone crowds up against Michael's back, arms sweeping around his waist and plastering his shirt back to his skin.

“If you won't tell me about your dream,” Calum says, his mouth pressed to Michael's ear. “I could tell you about mine, maybe.”

Michael tries to say “what”, but the sound gets lost in the noise around them. He twists in Calum's arms until they're facing each other, fumbling. One of his hands somehow ends up on the side of Calum's neck without his permission, thumb sinking into damp skin under his jaw.

“What are you talking about?” he asks.   

The whole world is shaking.

“I don't know,” Calum says. “Do you know what I'm talking about? Please tell me I haven't got this all wrong.”

“You had a dream?” Michael asks. “When did you—what happened, was it—was I there?”

“Yes,” Calum pants. 

“You guys are back on in ten seconds,” someone yells, and Michael doesn't even look away from Calum's face. He can feel the bulky heat of Luke crowding up near them, and he doesn't care. Calum's hands are braced on his waist, bunched in fists in his shirt so it's pulling tight across Michael's back, formed to his skin 

“You were in mine,” Michael says. “All of them. And we were—” His voice dies. He can't say it.

“I had mine last night. We were behind the shed at school,” Calum says. “Was yours—?”

“Yes,” Michael blurts. It's the same dream, it has to be, they had the same dream, which means—

A voice is counting down and Luke bumps into Michael's side, knocking him and Calum off balance.  Their guitars, still hanging between them by the straps, clank together, and Calum lets go of Michael to grab at his bass, steadying it. A strip of light from onstage cuts across his body from shoulder to hip, and something flares up like a star against his chest—the bead that Michael refused to take yesterday is strung on a chain around Calum's neck, shining bright just below the neckline of his shirt.

There's a flurry of drumming from the stage; Luke bursts past Michael to rush back onstage, and Calum gives Michael one last breathless look before he's peeling off after Luke. Michael scrambles to get a good grip on his own guitar and follow. Exclamation marks and fireworks are creating a mess in his head and jittering out through his whole body. All he can see is Calum's shoulders moving in front of him, and he follows blindly.

An echoing sound of jubilation rises up from the crowd when the three of them run back to their spots, arms in the air. If there's one thing Michael knows right now, it's that he gets how they feel. Ashton, still sat at his drums, says something, and then they're launching into “Good Girls”. Michael doesn't look across the stage at Calum—can't, right now—but he waits to hear one familiar thing.

“Michael, what does she say? 

Michael squeezes his eyes shut, yells, “Fuck yeah, there's feelings!” and rides the wave of screams all the way through the rest of the encore

****

Calum decides to play with Ashton’s drums as Ashton runs around to bow to the crowd at the very end of the set, and Michael ends up bodily dragging him away from them. Calum flashes him gleeful looks as Michael approaches and he only flails half-heartedly once Michael gets his arms around him. Calum’s chest is hot under Michael’s hands, his armpits leaving sticky sweat all over Michael’s wrists, Michael’s bracelet. Michael gets Calum to his feet and they head back up to join the other two for the big final bow together, and then that’s it. They’re leaving the stage for the last time, and Michael’s shaking with giddy terror.

Calum grabs his hand as soon as they’re properly offstage, and says, “come on,” his face glowing damply with the biggest smile Michael has ever seen.

Michael follows.

He doesn't know where they're going, but he takes the lead from Calum anyway, pulling him along just to feel the tug of their connected hands. His arms are sore and buzzing from the show, but he doesn't mind feeling the stress of it when he knows Calum's at the other end. It feels familiar, like everything does with Calum, and memories both dreamed up and real are flooding through him, running beside and around them in a laughing pack of skinny legs and smiles. Michael squeezes Calum's hand as hard as he can and runs faster, runs until they're pulling away from the others, just the two of them racing forward through the backstage halls.

Calum swerves and brings Michael over to a door with a glowing red EXIT sign over it. They punch out into darkness and fresh summer air—they're outside the back of the venue, in a tiny clearing with trees all around it, stars puncturing the sky up above. Michael doesn't bother looking around, just pushes Calum up against the wall beside the door and crowds into him all in one movement.

They argue sometimes, about which one of them is taller, but when Michael steps into Calum's space in that moment, there seems to be no difference at all. Calum's face is right there in front of Michael's, taking up his whole field of vision, his whole world, and all of the momentum Michael had built up onstage comes to a grinding halt. He can't breathe, fear and adrenaline combining into some huge, unexplainable static coursing from his head to his feet where they're slotted in between Calum's. He nudges forward an inch and draws back just as fast, his free hand moving restlessly, first to brace against the wall, then to snarl in the fabric at Calum's waist. Calum lets out a sharp, short exhale at the touch; Michael can feel it on his mouth.

Calum's fingers twitch against Michael's where they're still holding hands, their arms squashed between them.

“Michael?” Calum says, after a long, frozen moment. His voice is small, uncertain, and it's like a fist squeezing in Michael's gut—he's surging forward all at once, kissing Calum before he can think about it anymore.

Calum's whole body locks up, his hand gripping around Michael's like he's trying to crush Michael's bones. Panic explodes through Michael's head; for a second he's sure he's got it all wrong, that Calum's going to throw him off and never speak to him again. He's just starting to pull away when Calum makes a weak, hungry sound and leans into the kiss, opening up under Michael's mouth.

There's a screaming rush in Michael's ears—he falls forward again, pressing Calum into the wall, and Calum lets him. He's kissing Michael back like he's been wanting nothing else, and it's heady how fast Michael feels drugged up on the hot inside of Calum's mouth, the catch of his teeth on Michael's lower lip, the way he rubs his tongue over Michael's. Michael squeezes Calum's hand right back, their arms tensed with adrenaline between them, and Calum's other hand slides clumsily up Michael's spine to fist in his hair. There are whole flocks of birds swooping and wheeling in Michael's stomach; he's feeling something too big to really call happiness. This is the kind of thing that re-writes dictionaries, he thinks. This is the kind of thing that words exist for.

Calum pulls away to breathe sharp and humid against Michael's cheek, his lips smeared over the side of Michael's mouth. They pant together for a second, weirdly in sync. Michael's eyes are still closed, his forehead tipped against the side of Calum's face. He sucks in a breath of cool night air and slides his mouth over Calum's again, off-balance and drunk on the taste of him. 

“Michael,” Calum gasps. “Michael.”

“Yeah,” Michael says, the word dragged out over Calum's mouth

“You have no idea,” Calum says. “No idea how long I've—”

“It's been weeks,” Michael says. “You had one dream? I had one for every damn bead you gave me. More than that.”

“Weeks?” Calum says. “That's fucking kid stuff, man, I've been,” he kisses so hard Michael rocks back on his heels, still unsteady when Calum pulls away again and continues with, “since London, Mikey, since you got burned.”

“What?” Michael says. “Dreaming?”

“No,” Calum says. “Feeling, like—wanting this. I mean, I was so fucked up over that. I had to think about it for a while, and stuff, but that was when I started realizing. Told Luke, even, 'cause he caught me one day when I was freaking out about it.”

Michael remembers quiet conversations in corners and Luke looking at him weirdly for seemingly no reason, and a lot of things start to make sense. 

“I had no idea,” Michael says.

“I was good at hiding it, but I thought you figured it out,” Calum says. “And that's why you were being weird around me and avoiding—”

“I thought you figured me out,” Michael says. “That I was starting to—” He loses the rest of the sentence to a thin laugh. “Fuck.”

Calum closes his eyes, thunking his head back against the wall. The stretch of his neck makes something cramp up in Michael's mouth, jaw stiffening with the urge to bite. And he can, he can—so he does, bending in to set his teeth to Calum's skin. Calum shudders, his hips knocking up against Michael's. Their hands had untangled at some point, and Michael's got both of his gripping around the top of Calum's jeans, covering shirt and denim and a hot strip of skin.

“I've never,” Calum chokes out, “done anything with a guy—”

Michael scrapes his teeth over a mouthful of Calum's throat and pulls back to speak. “I kissed some guy at the club after dancing with you, but that's—that's it for me.”

“You left me to go make out with a fucking stranger?” Calum says. His eyes are open now, and they're so dark Michael can barely look at him.

“You were too dangerous,” Michael says. “I didn't even know I liked guys 'till I started dreaming about you.” The wet mark of his own mouth is starting to fade into Calum's skin, and he presses his lips there again to renew it, sweat under his tongue. 

“Tell me about them,” Calum says breathlessly. “The dreams.”

“It was us if we fucked around when we were kids,” Michael says. “I wanted to test and see if I was bi, and you let me test it on you. I've had weeks of watching this whole other life of ours. You were so little. Skinny.”

He slides his hands up to Calum's waist, digging his fingers in.

“I'm not dreaming, right?” he says, unable to help it. Calum's right here, under his hands, but Michael's gotten used to having this and then blinking awake to find it gone. What if he's finally gone off the edge and this is him completely mixing up reality and fantasy?

“Not unless I am too,” Calum says. “Weeks? Since I gave you the bracelet?”

“Yeah,” Michael says. “I don't know how, but it's the beads.”

“And that's why I dreamed last night,” Calum says. “'Cause you wouldn't take the last one from me. I knew there was something fucking weird about them, and when I woke up this morning, I knew it was connected, but I wasn't sure 'till you said you'd been having dreams.”

“Sorry I was such a dick about not taking the bead,” Michael says. “But it's really your fault that magical beads or whatever were drawn to you somehow, okay—”

“You were a fucking dick,” Calum says. “You could've just told me why you didn't want the bead, and then we could've, could've—”

He kisses Michael instead of ending the sentence. It gets intense fast—Michael can't keep his hands off Calum, stuck on all the ways it's different from and the same as the dreams. He's no longer bigger than Calum, and different parts of their bodies line up when Michael's pressed all along him. Calum's got muscle now, tense on his stomach and packed tight along his arms, and yet he still lets Michael push him around a little, still seems to like it. And when Michael flattens his hand at the small of Calum's back, he arches into the touch just like his dream self did, his mouth going loose against Michael's. It's all dazzlingly new that he can do this here, in actual real life, but finding that he knows Calum, that there are things that are the same about the two of them together even across space and time—it's the most obvious thing in the world.

“Love you,” he whispers, hot with embarrassment and certainty. “Calum, I—”

There's a sudden flash of light, a golden burn against Michael's closed eyelids, and he's seeing a distant image of two people, younger versions of him and Calum, sitting in Michael's childhood room and arguing over beads. It changes almost before he's registered it, flicking to them a little older than they are now, kissing on a balcony overlooking the ocean. Then it's clearly their dream-selves, laughing behind the shed at school, and Michael's pulling out of the kiss, pressing his forehead blindly against Calum's. He tries to open his eyes, but he can't—the pictures have taken over, scrolling through at breakneck speed.

“Calum?” he says.

“Yeah, yeah, I see it,” Calum breathes.

He can feel his Calum touching him still, pressed all along his body, hands at Michael's waist, but his head is full of other versions of them. There's Calum with actual facial hair, playing with a dog on a beach while Michael sits on a blanket. There's Michael with grey hair on his chest, lying comfortable in bed with a wrinkled Calum leaning against the doorframe. There's a child Michael spinning a bead on his desk by himself, and no Calum approaching him. There's a skinny, teenaged Calum screaming something at Michael and shoving him away in the middle of the hallway at school. There's them getting married, there's them getting divorced, there's them with a kid, and them onstage, and them kissing and yelling and fucking and crying, and then suddenly, just when Michael thinks his head is going to explode with it, it's all sucked away, leaving them shaking against each other in the dark.

“Holy shit,” Michael pants, as soon as he can speak. He opens his eyes, and he's never been happier to see Calum, just as he is, sweaty and rumpled, his mouth still slick and swollen from kissing.  

“What the fuck,” Calum says. “Has that happened to you before?”

“No,” Michael says. “Jesus.”

“The beads,” Calum says, glancing down. “Your wrist—”

Michael pulls his hand up between them. Every single silver bead has turned gold. Calum lifts his necklace up to see the bead on the end; it's done the same thing, all of them glinting like tiny suns.

“What the fuck,” Calum repeats flatly. His gaze shifts from the beads and then out over Michael's shoulder. “Michael.”

Somehow Michael isn't surprised when he turns around.

The small clearing they were in before is gone, and they're standing at the edge of a tiny parking lot. There's two rickety gas pumps in the middle of the pavement and a convenience store a little beyond, bright neon lights flickering in the window in front of a rainbow display of pop bottles lined up inside. The whole thing is surrounded by a ring of dark trees, enclosing them, locking them in this time and space under the night sky. The wall behind the two of them hasn't changed—they're still definitely outside the venue. It's as if this gas station has just been picked up and plunked down here.

“It's the same rest stop place,” Calum says, slowly. “This is the same spot where I found the first bead. Where I made you the bracelet.” 

Calum lets go of him and walks over to one of the gas pumps, carefully laying his hand on it, like he's testing how solid it is. Michael slumps back against the wall, dazed with the impossible familiarity of it all.

“This is where it started,” Michael says. “The dreams and stuff.”

“The first bead was over here,” Calum says, wandering over to a patch of pavement off to one side. “Right here.”

He nudges his foot at a dent in the tarmac that looks weirdly precise, like someone took an ice cream scoop to it.

“I read somewhere once that places like this are like, thin spots,” Michael says. “Rest stops or roadside gas stations or whatever. ’Cause like they're not places anyone actually lives, they're just places people pause at, sort of. So some people think they're like—liminal spaces. Closer to other worlds. Maybe all that stuff we just saw was like, other versions of us. In parallel universes and shit.”

“And the dreams weren't dreams.” Calum says, fingering the bead around his neck. “They were just you seeing into one of those universes.”

“There were beads in the dreams sometimes,” Michael realizes. “And I think I kept losing mine. What if these ones belong to the us that we dreamed about?”

Calum gives a little jolt, like he's just thought of something.

“I was thinking about you when I found the first bead,” Calum says. He laughs, soft and disbelieving. “I was thinking about you being all weird and sad the night before and touching your burns and stuff. I was thinking that I wished I had some sort of way to make you know for sure that you were loved. That I loved you.”

He's staring down at the ground, like he's too embarrassed to look at Michael, which is stupid, 'cause Michael fucking said it first. Michael's chest feels tight, and electricity is buzzing through his limbs—he can't stay by the wall anymore. He takes off, and meets Calum in more of a tackle than a hug, the two of them colliding and rocking back and forth on their feet in the middle of the gas station.

“So maybe the first bead was pulled through because of that,” Calum says, muffled against Michael's shoulder. “So they could show you how we could be.”

“And then kept coming 'cause I didn't get it,” Michael says. “You totally were wooing me.”

“Fuck, I guess I was,” Calum giggles. His eyes have gone all squinty cute, and Michael wants to pin him to the ground and kiss him all over. “I mean, I tried to use them to remind myself that we were just friends, 'cause like, friendship bracelet, but each time I wished, just a little bit, that somehow you would get it.”

“I get it now,” Michael says. “Fuck, I definitely get it.”

Calum kisses him, fumbling and off-centre because they're squashed too close together. It still sort of knocks Michael off his feet. He's pretty sure it's not going to stop doing that for a very long time.

Calum had asked in the dream if Michael thought they were meant to be, and Michael still doesn't know if that's a thing, magic and universes and visions aside. But they're just outside an arena where they played tonight, where they sang songs they wrote together, and wrote with their other two best friends, and when they go back inside, they've got Ashton and Luke there and their whole tour crew. Maybe in other worlds they had it easier—maybe Michael wasn't so scared and got there faster—but he doesn't want to be anywhere else but here, with his Calum. The dreams were only the best universe to show him to get him to figure out that where he wanted to be was right here.

Out of all those other versions of themselves, he's pretty sure they're the ones who got it right.

****

When they try to go back into the venue, the door won't open, and Michael panics for a second before Calum figures it out. The gas station showed up because it was where Calum was given the first bead, and now the beads have to go back. They leave the bracelet and the necklace lying in the dent of pavement where it all started, and only then will the doorknob twist.

There's a flash of golden light from Calum's neck and Michael's wrist just as the door closes, and they find tiny imprints of the beads on their skin, almost like they were burned there. It doesn't hurt though, nothing like months ago and fire against Michael's head.

“We match,” says Michael, when Calum tries to apologize.

They open the door for one last glance back, and the clearing is back to normal, just a garbage can and a picnic table, no sign of the gas station or the beads.

They hold hands in the halls, and wave cheerfully to crew as they pass. No one gives them a second glance, because apparently being stupid in love is something that is vastly unsurprising to everyone. The shaky feeling in Michael's chest is closer to happiness than fear, and he clings to Calum's hand as hard as he can.

When they get back to the dressing room, it's empty except for Luke and Ashton. They're whispering furiously on a couch, and as the door opens, Ashton springs up and points dramatically at Michael and Calum.

“I knew there was someone you were getting screwed up over!” he yells at Michael. “You should've told me! And you—you told Luke, but not me?”

“Sorry,” says Calum. “It was an accident. No one was supposed to know, but once Luke did, if I told you too, then it would’ve been the whole band against Michael. That’s not fair.”

“So you're not gonna get mad about how we'll make it awkward on the tour bus?” Michael says. He tries to make it nonchalant, but by the way Ashton drops his arm and looks at him, he's pretty sure it doesn't quite work.

“You better not make it awkward,” Ashton says softly. “No hurting each other.”

“You can't threaten both of them in one go,” Luke says. He's grinning in a way that is somehow both parental and smug at the same time.

“Sure I can,” Ashton says.

“Calum, I told you things would work out and you didn't need to be all 'ah, he doesn't love me' all the time,” Luke starts, and Calum lets go of Michael's hand to lunge across the room and wrestle Luke onto the couch, trying to cover his mouth while muttering various death threats.

“Always pining!” Luke shouts, flailing under Calum. “So much emo!”

“Shut up!” Calum shrieks. He's gone all flushed, smiling stupidly, and Michael barely has to think about it before he's launching himself on top of the pile.

“Band orgy!” he yells. “Someone grab Ash!”

“No!” Ashton laughs. “I do not approve! No! Let go of my leg!”  

They end up in an exhausted sprawl on the carpet about five minutes later. Calum's face is smushed somewhere near Michael's armpit and Ashton is lying half on top of Michael and half on Luke, and all Michael can think of is going on their first tour with 1D and pushing their beds together to sleep in a giant cuddle.

“I love you guys,” he says. “I'm so glad we became friends with you.”

“No sex on the tourbus,” Ashton says.

“What?” Calum yells.

“Just because I love you too doesn't mean anyone's having sex on the tourbus!” Ashton says.

“I'm with Ash on this,” Luke says.

“You guys suck!” Calum says.

Michael's laughing too hard to contribute. He puts his hands over his face and finds it wet. He doesn't know when he started crying, but it's okay. His temple doesn't hurt anymore and his wrist is empty, but he knows who he is, and Calum's here. They're all here.

****

That night, Michael has one last dream.

It's the first one of its kind where he can tell he's actually dreaming. He's not seeing from the eyes of fifteen-year old Michael anymore—he's standing somewhere off to the side, watching, and everything has the soft, hazy quality of real dreams.

The dream versions of him and Calum are alone in the music room at their high school, sitting with acoustic guitars in their laps, practicing a song. Their knees are touching. Calum's got a look of deep concentration on his face, and he's fumbling to get a specific chord right, skinny fingers flashing sore, red lines when he flexes his hand. Dream Michael glances furtively at the door and grabs Calum's hand to press a kiss to the centre of his palm. Calum smiles while Michael's eyes are closed, and then shoves his face away. They snipe at each other, grinning over the top of their guitars, and it's as familiar and endless as it's ever been.

They both are wearing bracelets. Shoelaces, with small golden beads on them.

**Author's Note:**

> come and shout at me on [tumblr](http://asymmetricboys.tumblr.com) if you want, and if you liked this fic, you can reblog the post for it [here!](http://asymmetricboys.tumblr.com/post/131237990518/unlikely-lighthouses-michaelcalum-37440-words)


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